


Trouble

by theLiterator



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Green Lantern (2011), Justice League
Genre: Batman is an Idiot, Drinking, European Getaways, Friendship, Hal has issues, Hilarity, Identity Porn, M/M, Paris - Freeform, Pining, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Romance, Sex Pollen, Superheroes, Teambuilding, Unconventional Love Letter, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Wall Sex, charity dinners
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-18
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-03-18 12:20:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 21,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3569426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLiterator/pseuds/theLiterator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The billionaire's booty call.</p><p>Or: Hal Jordan sleeps with Bruce Wayne for awhile, and then he falls in love with Batman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Your Sights

"I'll need you to be on your absolute best behavior for this," she said as she straightened his tie.

"Carol—"

"No, Hal, it's different with the brass, I can always say 'No, he's a pilot, he's a ring knocker,' and they more or less let you get away with any bullshit. But this is _different_ and I need you to..."

He smiled at her once it was clear that she didn’t have a way to finish that thought, leaning in to kiss her forehead. "I know, Carol," he said patiently. "Best behavior."

"Act like you were really in for the decade you claim," she said.

"I will."

"We really need his money," she told him.

Hal wrapped her in a loose hug that didn't disturb her outfit, and she sighed heavily against his shoulder. It was probably really shallow for him to worry about her makeup smearing onto the fabric, but the tuxedo was a rental, so…

"It's not that I don't trust you, it's just..."

He hmmed agreement, even though he knew it _was_ that she didn't trust him. But it wasn't as if he had given her much cause to trust him in the past, and now that he had the ring, he'd become even less reliable than before, though with a lot better reason, granted.

"Panic attack over?" he asked, pulling away from her decisively.

"What panic attack?" Carol replied, and he grinned at her and opened the door so she could precede him into the fray.

It was a stupid event, hors d'oeuvres and wine and false laughter sparkling from the edges of the room.

"Mr. Wayne!" Carol said, making her way straight for the billionaire, ready to do whatever it took to get her money. He'd always hated the assholes who were into that sort of ego-propping, but Carol had been a Brat first, same as him, and now she all but ran a big name contracting company, and, well. She could make her own decisions.

"Hello darling," Wayne said, warm and utterly false, gathering Carol's hand to kiss the back of it and outright leering at her. "You're even more stunning in person. It's a sincere pleasure to meet you."

"I can say the same about you, Mr. Wayne," Carol said with a soft, flirtatious laugh. "And this is Hal Jordan, one of our test pilots."

"A test pilot?" Wayne said. "That sounds like my kind of business, all adrenaline and... but you must call me Brucie." He took Hal's hand, and Hal completely failed to resist the urge to grip tightly, picturing the bones splintering under his.

Wayne grinned at him; leered, really, more assessing and intent than the one he'd sent Carol's way, and Hal let go by instinct, just barely suppressing the desire to take a step backward.

"Got quite the grip on you there, tiger. Just what I'd expect from a... _flyboy_."

Well shit. Carol was sending him frantic, conflicting glances, half ‘back the hell off now before he eats you _alive_ ’ and half ‘please for the love of the Lantern Corps do not screw this up for me or I will _cry_.’

Keeping Carol from tears won for him, hands down, every time. And the guy might be an asshole—the guy was definitely an asshole; Hal was basically an expert in womanizing assholes, seeing as he was one—but Wayne was extremely attractive and he did have a lot of money, so Hal smiled back, showing teeth.

"Anything else you're expecting from a flyboy? I'd hate to let you down."

So the first time goes a little like this:

They're both in tuxedos, but Hal's is a rental, and he manages to gasp that information into Wayne's ear before they get too far along. Wayne undresses him with more skill than Hal thinks anyone should have with clothes this complicated, and he isn't entirely sure where the fabric goes. Suddenly there's cold air against his skin until there isn't again; Wayne pressing up, chest to chest so Hal can feel the heat of him. His suit's softer than Hal's was.

They're in a stark white hallway with the clatter of dishes from the kitchens loud enough to cover their noise (Hal hopes) and his back's against the wall, Wayne jerking him off with a hand that's way too rough for a billionaire who doesn't have any damn thing to do but _this_.

Wayne bites until he draws blood and is utterly unapologetic about it.

Hal doesn't _quite_ go completely boneless, but that's mostly because if he did he'd be shit out of luck because that's the kind of asshole Wayne is. Another bite and this time Hal bites back. He manages to get the front of Wayne's slacks open. It's practiced and easy to do this, and that's probably a good thing because Hal doesn't quite remember how to make his eyes focus. Not with how close Wayne is, not with the way Wayne pushes into his hand and presses him harder against the wall.

He swallows back the noise he wants to make when Wayne finally breaks in his hand—against his _skin_ , and shit, what the hell is he even going to use to clean that up?

He spots his pants, but it's Wayne who nudges them closer with one foot. Hal spots the crisp fold of one of Carol's handkerchiefs sticking out of the pocket. He snatches it, suddenly vulnerable and bare without Wayne shoved up against him.

"You do this with the girls, too?" he demands without thinking, while he tries to remember how a tux works: it isn't mess dress and ribbons and he doesn’t have his current girlfriend or that friendly waitress or the Chief making sure everything looks like it should. Carol isn't in this hallway to help either, mostly because Hal is, and Wayne is still an asshole, just watching him fumble with buttons and zippers, eyes hooded and dark and unfathomable like maybe orgasms give him depth.

"Why," Wayne asks, "did you want the 5-star hotel suite and rose petal bath treatment?"

Hal flips him off, turns around, and stalks away to text Carol that if she wants him back at the party she's going to need to re-dress him.

When he’d finished telling her the whole story, her hands stilled on his lapels and he’d thought she might say something _useful_ , but she just grinned at him and shook her head. "He wanted to get caught, _tiger_ ," she said.

Hal knocked his head back against the concrete wall rather more firmly than was probably necessary.

She pursed her lips. "The question is, do we give him what he wants, or do we keep him on the line? How did he look _after_?"

"Like he'd just had sex," Hal said, staring at her. She was obviously crazy—or, more likely, she had some deeper meaning that he couldn’t grasp because the sex had robbed him of much needed brainpower.

"Hmm," she said, pursing her lips so he could see where she’d chewed through her lipstick. He’d always liked that look better than freshly-applied; more real, more—well. Debauched. Then she loosened his bowtie and hid his cummerbund in her purse. "Perfect," she said.

Wayne was just as obviously disheveled when Hal and Carol re-entered the room, mouth bruised raw and one hand draped so loosely around a girl’s waist that his fingers were brushing her hipbone. It made him shiver, and if he'd been 25 instead of 35, it probably would have caused other problems too, which was absolutely ridiculous because Wayne was _touching someone else_.

He licked his lips, and it was like Wayne had sensed it, because suddenly, unaccountably, they were making eye contact and a tiny, sardonic little grin was twisting Wayne's features, and Hal? Hal was a complete fucking moron and he smiled back, offering a lax salute in response.

"Perfect," Carol said again, low and amused in his ear. Right. He was doing it for the potential investment, not the knee-melting wall sex.


	2. You Got Me Alone

So, the thing about labeling something as a first time is the implication that a second time is expected. Or a third.

“I’m Wayne’s west coast booty call,” Hal moaned into Carol’s couch pillow. He’d dropped his phone after reading the message, the _hookup request_ , onto Carol’s rug. The news meandered on in the background about some Pacific hurricane that was pretty much guaranteed not to affect them in any way, and Carol patted the back of his head.

“If you’re his booty call, you could call him by his first name,” she said calmly. He rubbed his cheek into the rough denim of her jeans.

“No. I won’t be that man.”

“The man who refers to his sexual partner by their given name?” she asked, and there was genuine curiosity in her voice, hidden far, far below the teasing. And that was the question, wasn’t it? Why _wouldn’t_ he call the man by his name?

Because he was a booty call. Hal was so far out of his own league here, he had to keep reminding himself of that fact _somehow_. He didn’t have the name or the money or the contacts to be anything more to Wayne than a hot fuck whenever he hit up sunny California.

Hal groaned and tried to roll over so he could glare at her, but the muscles in his back screamed for his attention. He sent them a silent mental apology, all ‘I promise I won’t move again’ and ‘Please stop hurting’ and ‘I’ll even let Carol put more of that smelly crap on you.’ 

“I’m not going,” he said. “These injuries—“

“You were rock climbing,” Carol said. “You fell. Your idiot of a partner didn’t anchor you correctly, shit happens, blah, complain, blah.”

“You are entirely too smart for your own good,” he said, and it was a compliment.

Carol snorted, which was her way of saying ‘no shit’ without derailing the conversation. He’d desperately wanted to derail it, but, she was entirely too smart for her own good. “I can’t actually tell you to go, since I’m pretty sure that would mean I was whoring you out.” 

Hal flinched bodily, and she waited for that to pass before she squeezed out more liniment to rub into his back. He would have protested, because that stuff smelled _bizarre_ , but it did help with the pain. A little. “But I’m going to quote you here:” she continued, “‘Best wall-sex of my life.’”

Hal groaned.

“They really should get someone who’s studied human anatomy over on Oa. I’m pretty sure that they need to offer some sort of health plan if they’re going to be employing you in such a dangerous field.”

“I’m a contractor,” he said. “Independent; no big name company to back my plays and negotiate on my behalf.”

“That could be remedied,” she said, laughing, and he would have joined her except that his back was a mess of bruises where he hadn’t come up with a construct fast enough to save himself from the injury. He’d saved a family though, and that was… that was extremely worth it.

At least nothing was broken, he thought.

His phone buzzed with a second message from Wayne, who was discreetly programmed in as “Big W” because Hal had class enough for ten men. Carol scooped it up off her carpet and dropped it next to his face.

“If I turn him down this time, he won’t ask again, will he?” he asked, because Carol would know. Hell, _he_ knew. He just didn’t want to admit to the knowledge, or to caring about the answer.

“He might?” she offered, and he groaned again before deciding on a response.

_u gonna send me a car?_

The reply was instantaneous: _It will arrive at Carol Ferris’s residence at 8:30._

He brandished the phone at her, and her face got all thoughtful and blank the way it only did when she was working, so he didn’t try to tease an impression from her.

She dressed him in an ex-boyfriend’s jeans and his own button-down flannel shirt and flight jacket and practically shoved him out the door to meet the car. “Rock climbing!” she shouted after him, and he waved over his shoulder and was surprised to see that there wasn’t a back seat. Opened the car door and was surprised to find that there wasn’t a driver.

Well, there was, because the car wasn’t _magic_ , but. Wayne had driven to pick him up himself.

“Figured this sort of thing was beneath you,” Hal said, even as he strapped himself into the passenger seat.

Wayne’s fingers drummed out a staccato beat on the steering wheel, and his eyes were locked on the road stretched out ahead of them; he was making his way towards the sea. Romantic, Hal thought. Cliché.

He waited so long to reply that Hal had already figured he wasn’t going to, then said, “Adrenaline, you know?”

“Well, yeah, for the driving. But the picking me up part of it?”

“I had time.”

The seats were heated, and Hal could feel his muscles unknotting, which mean that the booty call was totally worth it just for that alone. It’d been two days since he’d been able to move without agony, and Carol’d had a point about Oa learning more about human anatomy beyond ‘Nothing life-threatening. We hope.’

“You haven’t asked where we’re going,” Wayne said, and Hal blinked and rolled his head over to look at him instead of straight ahead.

“It’s your car,” he replied.

Wayne grunted acknowledgement. It just figured that outside of sex and parties he would be monosyllabic.

“Yes,” Wayne said finally. “But you’re inside it.”

“Look, I figure you’ve got the means to do whatever the hell you want with me, whether I know in advance or not, so why worry?”

Wayne pulled the car into the shoulder and unbuckled so he could lean over Hal. Hal would have straightened in the seat, but his back felt _amazing_ and he wasn’t wasting that until he absolutely had to.

“How were you injured, Hal.” Wayne demanded.

Hal blinked at him. “Uh,” he said, struck dumb by Wayne’s sudden mood change, by the strangeness of the character he seemed to be portraying in tonight’s film, then, finally remembering Carol’s advice, he answered, “Rock climbing. Buddy’s a moron.”

Wayne blinked too, and then suddenly, that asshole playboy was looking through his eyes and he grinned. “Yeah, that one I know,” he said, laughing and drawing back, the moment gone like it hadn’t been.

They didn’t have sex on the beach, because neither of them were really young enough for that bullshit, but it turned out that Wayne had beachfront property in Coast City (Hal wondered if there was any place Wayne _didn’t_ happen to have property, but he kept those thoughts to himself.) and the bedroom had a balcony and the night was dark ocean and clouds punctuated by the city’s lights.

“Is Gotham anything like this?” he stupidly asked while Wayne was stripping him naked, gripping the railing tight.

“No,” Wayne said, amusement sparking up at him, and Hal wondered why the tenor of that amusement was so completely different from other times. Was this more genuine? Was this—

Once they were both naked, Hal drew him in for a kiss because, one, Wayne could certainly pull off a panty-wetter, and two, being a booty call probably required some small measure of reciprocal sexual contact on his part, and why not kissing because see number one above, and three, the night was dark and cool and Wayne was pale and warm in the lights from the city.

“I brought you out here for the bed,” Wayne said, and then he hauled Hal up so Hal was helpless to do anything but wrap his legs around Wayne’s waist while Wayne carried him back inside and settled him on said bed.

“Jesus,” Hal said, and he would have rolled over to analyze the fuck out of Wayne’s muscles, because Hal weighed a good 185 pounds and Wayne had just picked him up like that was _nothing_ , but his back made its tortured existence known again and he just lay there in Wayne’s bed like an idiot while Wayne ran his hand lightly over Hal’s abdomen.

“Hm,” Wayne said.

Hal caught his hand and curled their fingers together. “C’mon Wayne, kiss me,” he ordered. Wayne laughed, low and breathless and not at all sparkling and false like he usually laughed (but what the fuck did Hal know about usually, really?) and then he did, making his way sloppy-wet down Hal’s torso until Hal stopped wondering if it was okay booty-call etiquette to bury his fingers in Wayne’s hair and just _did it_.

Then Wayne’s mouth was on him and he tensed up, ready to… and “Eurgh,” he groaned, twisting away.

“Lats!” Hal panted, eyes squinting shut from the sudden pain.

“Hm,” Wayne said again, exact same intonation and everything, before flipping him to his front easily, then sucking in a sharp, low breath. Suddenly, there was one fewer person on the bed and Wayne was rifling through something nearby, and Hal couldn’t be bothered to care. He was pretty sure being in too much pain for sex was a definite end to his days as a billionaire’s booty call. Shame, really.

And then Wayne’s hands were on him, smoothing a sweet-smelling lotion on his back, and it was already six times better than Carol’s because of the _smell_ , but when it started to numb the pain he might have professed his love for the stuff into the pillow.

Which, of course Wayne heard him. He replied with that undercurrent of dark amusement from before, “Alfred, my butler, keeps it on hand.”

“Mmm,” Hal agreed.

Then that sparkle re-entered Wayne’s voice and he continued, “I used to play polo, and I’d bruise up like an overripe peach, it was awful, absolutely _dreadful_. But Alfred, well, he doesn’t seem to realize that I’m not that stupid young boy anymore and makes certain I always pack it. Lucky for you, huh, tiger?”

“Sorry,” Hal said. “I should have told you, and you could have called someone else.”

“Are you kidding, tiger?” Wayne said, patting Hal’s shoulder before rolling him to his side and then spooning up, somehow finding a position that didn’t tax his abused back. “This is perfect. Get some sleep, we’ll sort everything out in the morning.”

As Hal had strongly suspected would happen, he was alone the next morning. He found his clothes and put them on while shooting off a text to Carol.

 _I need a ride,_ he wrote, attaching a screenshot from the map app so she’d know where he was.

She replied with a kissing smilie, and he pulled up the news while he rifled through Wayne’s stuff. He wondered if it counted as stealing if he took some of the man’s clothes, or if Wayne would even notice. In the end, none of it really made him want to risk being sued to death, so he tapped on a news link about some sort of massive sting operation by Batman and his allies in Gotham, and considered that maybe the fallout of that had drawn Wayne away (the top image in the article was of the exterior of a WE building), not the awkwardness of a morning-after-nothing, and then snorted at his attempt at self-delusion.

He flicked to the next headline and stared dumbly at his own naked ass.

"Bruce Wayne Spotted Seducing New Man!”

Well.

That was something.

He quickly dialed Carol and put it on speaker so he could skim the article while it rang.

“I made national news,” he said when she picked up.

"Hal, I'm _driving_."

“But I’m second only to _Batman_ in the headlines.”

“You mean your naked ass is second only to Batman in the headlines.”

“ _Batman_ , Carol. I almost beat out _Batman_ with nothing but my naked ass; not even Green Lantern Me can manage that!”

“Well, really, it was Bruce Wayne _tapping_ your naked ass that _failed_ to beat out Batman for the biggest news of the evening.”

Carol hung up then, so Hal pulled his shirt over his head.


	3. Flew me to places I'd never been

Despite making _inter_ national headlines with his naked ass the failed third time, he didn’t expect for there to be a fourth time.

After all, he hadn’t exactly followed through, and the secret to a great hookup is… you know… actually _hooking up_.

So when he got back to Earth to five text messages from Wayne, pouring into his cell phone one after another in rapid succession the second it realized it was in range of a tower, he had to do a double take.

His apartment was empty and cold and not for the first time he considered just letting the lease lapse. He was barely able to sleep there, what with intergalactic crime fighting and so on, and Carol ended up putting up with him most nights he spent on Earth anyway.

He stared at the messages.

_My apologies for last time, there was an emergency, I had to leave at dawn._

_Allow me to make it up to you next time I’m in town?_

_Normally I’d allow a man to have his no in peace and quiet, but I can’t help but think you may have misinterpreted some things._

_I’m contacting Carol Ferris._

_Carol informs me you’ve never been to Paris._

Carol was a goddamned liar and Hal had never loved her as completely as he did in that moment.

 _sorry,_ he texted. _i was in the mountains. no reception, you know how it is. paris, you say?_

Then he texted Carol: _i was at spang for 2 years how the fuck am I supposed to fake never having been to paris?_

_Use your imagination._

_And by your imagination._

_I mean your penis._

_Aim high._

_Hoo-ah._

He sent her a quick _i’m so blocking your number._

He didn’t get a text back from Wayne, though he did get an email from a Mr. Aaronsen confirming a flight reservation the next morning.

Hal dug out his passport.

Luckily, Wayne didn’t seem terribly keen on seeing the sights in Paris. It was a little disappointing, because it would have been nice to pretend that he was more than just an international booty call, but it was also a relief because he didn’t have to pretend he’d never been to the city. 

And besides, while dinner may have been served in the hotel room, not at a restaurant, it was fantastic.

“Wait a second,” Hal said somewhere around the third course. “Are you dating me? Is this you dating me? Because I don’t remember signing up for that.”

Wayne set his wine glass down. Hal swallowed hard. He hadn’t really meant to say that aloud.

“What, exactly, did you think this was?” Wayne asked calmly. Truth be told, Hal liked these moments the best, the times when Wayne had none of the verve of the playboy and all the dark intensity of… of _something_.

“Well, we started with deliberately public wall sex,” Hal said more calmly than he felt, sipping his own wine. “Was there some secret ‘Hey, I want to date you,’ in there that I missed? Because, well. I missed it.”

Wayne stood up and stalked to the windows, where he simply drew the curtains shut, cutting out the City of Lights. “You’re right,” Wayne said, and Hal blinked hard in the sudden darkness. Wayne lit the candle that had been left in the center of the table. 

Hal crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back, kicking out his legs.

Wayne ignored the blatant signal to back the hell off and hauled Hal in for a brutal kiss. Everything about the kiss was controlled violence, from the hand at the back of Hal’s neck to the way Wayne’s teeth grazed his lips, and Hal moaned into it and reached up to cling to Wayne’s shoulders despite his original intention to stand his ground.

Still, Parisian booty call.

Or date.

Hal pulled back and didn’t flinch at the intensity of Wayne’s stare.

“We—we absolutely need to talk about this,” he said. “This is an important conversation we aren’t having.”

“I’m not dating you,” Wayne said. “I don’t _date_.”

“Yeah,” Hal said. “Okay. Let me know how that works out for you.” Which should have been his exit line, but instead he drew Wayne back in for more searing kisses, and this time he undressed Wayne first.

Wayne was… unbelievable in the strictest definition. Even in the light of a single candle, it was obvious that his body was, in fact, a masterwork of scarred skin stretched taut across solid muscle, and Hal wondered why the hell he was hiding that. He couldn’t help the way he dragged his hands down Wayne’s back, his fingers finding the sharp edges of his well-defined muscles, his palms catching against rough scars. He bent to bite at one that curled, thin and shining, just beside Wayne’s spine.

“God,” Hal whispered. “Why the hell are you hiding this?”

In lieu of an answer, Wayne just rolled over and pushed his hands expertly into Hal’s clothing, and Hal forgot everything but sweat and sex.

***

Wayne was in the shower when the call came, and Hal spent a few precious seconds arguing about it before the bland, slightly perplexed inquiry of “What is Paris?” sent him, frustrated and furious, out to do his goddamned job.

Six hours later, he returned to an empty hotel room and turned on the lights. It broke the spell, but seeing Wayne’s luggage strewn all around reassured him that Wayne had just gone out to grab coffee or a cigarette or something (he didn’t think Wayne smoked. He was _pretty sure_. Dammit, this was definitely still in booty-call territory if he didn’t even know whether the man smoked). He decided to take a shower while he had the chance—he had alien blood on his hands where his constructs had shattered, and he was exhausted and furious in the deep, cold parts of him that only awakened when he failed miserably at something.

This was _his_ sector, and losing even a single planet to a pointless civil war rankled on a level that was impossible to articulate to anyone outside of the Corps; and too many among the Corps still saw humans as undeveloped animals: none of them would speak with him about such petty concerns.

When he came out of the shower, Wayne was waiting on the bed; his hair was damp and curling and he smelled like soap, and Hal had to wonder if he’d been co-opted on the booty call front in the last six hours, and then he wondered why the hell he cared.

“You left,” Wayne said.

“Uh, yeah—Jacuzzi? I think I fell asleep though. Where were you? You weren’t here when I came back.”

“Videoconference. Time zones are a bitch, but sometimes I have to show up and pretend to run the company.” A sharp grin that Hal was beginning to suspect was nothing but false, a dismissive shrug.

“I can’t do this,” Hal said. He’d meant to add ‘right now,’ and he almost did, stuttering over the words before finally abandoning them. “I have… I have responsibilities and shit, and I never thought I’d say this, but, flying to Paris on a moment’s notice isn’t really. Practical.”

“It’s not meant to be practical. I can buy you planes, if that’s it, tiger,” Wayne said. “You don’t actually need to work, if you want to… if you want. Deliberately public wall sex aside.”

“You don’t understand,” Hal whispered. “I keep deluding myself that maybe you’re like, this enigma or something, with your secret smiles and, I don’t know, muscles. Scars. But you’re just—we’re different people.”

Hal had used to be someone exactly like Wayne, with his lust and his lack of care for those around him. Hal stared at his fingernails and the purple-brown blood under his thumbnail that hadn’t been washed away by the shower.

Wayne took the hand and pressed a kiss to the back of it, his fingers tangling with Hal’s. “So we aren’t dating,” Wayne said decisively. “That doesn’t exactly take sex or spontaneous Parisian getaways off the table. It just means we don’t have to justify…” he waved his hand rather expressively around the room, which Hal took to mean the man wanted to have other partners besides Hal, and Hal strongly considered shutting him up, explaining that he’d wanted to break it off entirely.

“Yeah,” he said instead. “We can have alone time, and we can still fuck.”

Wayne grinned at him, and Hal didn’t smile back.

Despite that, or maybe because of it, the fifth, sixth, and seventh times occurred all over Europe. It was like the galaxy realized he needed a break after that last episode and gave it to him. Wayne still disappeared at all hours, but Hal pretended not to notice and lavished himself with excellent room service on a billionaire’s credit card, mostly because it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and he wasn’t mature enough to turn down free luxury.

Carol texted him constantly, which was nice, and he didn’t really have any other ties to Coast City, and he’d missed the hell out of Europe.

“Where to next?” Wayne asked, pouring a finger of akvavit into Hal’s glass in Copenhagen. 

“Why not Gotham?” Hal asked. “I’ve never been, and everyone hears stories, you know?”

“Gotham,” Wayne says, laughing. “Why would you want to go to a place like _that_ , tiger?”

“So you can fuck me in your mansion,” Hal replied. “I’ve never had sex in a mansion before.”

“We’ve had sex in a castle, though,” Wayne said, smiling seductively. “And in a—“

There was a knock at the door, and Hal stared at it. No one knocked on the doors in places like this; housekeeping staff would come and go discreetly, but they all had keycards.

“You get it,” Wayne said, and for the first time since Paris he was serious again, and Hal had to be honest here, it was like there were two different Waynes in this relationship (booty call) and only one of them was truly _interesting_. The interesting one was front and center right now, but Hal wasn’t sure how long this would last.

Hal shrugged and got up to open the door, which he immediately slammed shut again, thumb rubbing the band of his ring as he engaged the deadbolt and strode quickly through the suite. “Uh, hey, Wayne?” he called over the sound of three burly men trying to kick the door in. “Those are mercs, and heavyweights at that. We need to leave _now_.”

Wayne didn’t waste any time asking questions, he just grabbed a smaller duffle and stepped into some shoes. “The window will open far enough.”

Great, now Hal got to scale a wall while being chased by mercs in Copenhagen. Denmark was definitely not on his ‘to be repeated’ list. The door was going to give in to their assault at any second, and Hal gave Wayne an ‘are you sure?’ sort of look, and Wayne leered back at him.

“Just like rock climbing,” Wayne said. “No problem, right?”

Which wouldn’t have been entirely true except that there was a stealthy black chopper with a gorgeous redhead at the helm waiting for them once the window was open, and they were out of sight by the time the first muzzle flashes lit up the dark room below them.

“So,” Wayne said. “About Gotham.”


	4. You Found Me

Hal did not end up making number eight in Gotham. Nor was number nine.

Carol said he should probably stop counting, especially since his criteria had gotten a little bit vague in Europe and he’d only counted cities, since it was really only one encounter.

Erehwon experienced an extreme flood due to an interesting conjunction of the other planets in the system. Due to Corps intervention, only three villages succumbed--only 4045 casualties.

There were 4045 casualties, and a bonus ruined harvest.

Hal was simultaneously Bruce Wayne’s arm candy and his dirty little secret, and occasionally Hal found time to go up with Carol, or to just sit with Carol and watch her lose hilariously at chess.

“I just don’t get it,” he said as he put her into checkmate for the third game in a row. “You’re brilliant at strategy. You’re probably smarter than me. How are you so terrible at this game? I’m not even that good and I’m kicking your ass.”

“I’m seeing someone,” she said.

“Well, you’re obviously not learning chess from him,” Hal said. “Seeing seeing like with emotions seeing? Or seeing like… _seeing_.”

Carol rolled her eyes at him. 

“Emotions, gotcha. You need me to threaten him any? Put the fear of God into him?” he asked, half a dozen plans already in place for just such an occurrence, and she laughed, and tipped over her king. 

***

The guy was called Jordan which was just a dumb first name, and Hal followed him to a bar. 

When Jordan glanced over at him, Hal was in his most intimidating posture with an amused grin on his face, and Jordan said, eyebrow cocked and a mocking smirk plastered across his face, “Hey, you’re that guy Bruce Wayne’s fucking around with, aren’t you?”

And Hal froze. “No,” he replied after too many seconds had passed. “I’m Carol’s best friend. I was going to buy you a beer, but if you’re gonna call me a fag, you can just—“

“Whoa, whoa, my mistake,” Jordan interrupted, hands up and smile wide. 

He accepted his beer and Hal’s lecture about Carol’s virtues with good humor, and Hal got a text from Wayne so he cut out early and Wayne went to kiss him in the darkness of his car and said, “You’re drunk,” and Hal said, “Yeah,” and “What’s it to you,” and that was how time number twelve came about.

“And I can’t even stand to listen to her talk about him. I mean, I want her to be happy, but the guy’s a total douche, and his name is _Jordan_ which is, frankly, the most irritating thing about him. Every time she says his name I have to look over my shoulder, like, who’s calling for me. It’s giving me nightmares. _Basic Military Training_ nightmares.”

“Does he hit her?” Wayne asked, kissing Hal’s throat.

“See? This is relevant! I told her this was relevant, you think this is relevant.”

“I take it she doesn’t agree,” Wayne murmured before biting down hard where he’d been kissing. Hal arched up and moaned.

“Stop, okay, this is serious.”

“So is this,” Wayne replied. “Does he belittle her? Restrict her social life?”

“Mmm—I—no. He’s actually—Okay this is very distracting.”

“Good.”

***

Jordan eventually dumped Carol, and Wayne texted him on the same night.

Hal wanted to ignore it, but Carol was drunk and trying to steal his phone from him, so he agreed to her demands (salted caramel gelato and Pride and Prejudice, the one with Keira Knightley,) and retreated to the kitchen.

_something came up._

_Anything I can help with?_

Hal kind of wanted to reiterate the whole “Not my boyfriend,” thing for Wayne’s sake, but he was too run down from Carol’s heartbreak to deal with that can of worms just then.

_personal, not fiscal. but thanks_

Carol got a bouquet of exotic flowers delivered to her desk every day for _weeks_ and Hal wondered how the fuck Wayne _knew_ , and Carol tried to give him some of the flowers, because, she argued, they were actually for him.

For number thirteen, Hal almost made it to Gotham before the flight was grounded in goddamned _Detroit_ and out of frustration he decided to go on patrol and ended up busting three crime rings led by the goddamned _cops_ and Detroit could just fall into a _pit_ as far as he was concerned, and then—

Then there was an intergalactic emergency and he was off-planet for three months, and that should probably have been the end of his life as a billionaire’s booty call.

“Tibet,” Carol told him handing him her cellphone. “I told him you were in Tibet learning serenity or something and he wanted you to call him as soon as you got back Stateside.”

“What if I had taken a vow of celibacy?” Hal asked, raising an eyebrow at her.

“He didn’t stipulate.”

“Wow, he must never have worked a day in Log/Acq in his _life_.”

“He’s got people who do that for him.”

“I’m calling him.”

She made a ‘so do it’ sort of gesture and raised her eyebrow imperiously in his direction.

Hal sighed and didn’t call him.

***

They were just wrapping up a demonstration in Metropolis when a familiar body brushed up against him from behind, and a warm, seductive voice said, “You’re back, tiger. How was Tibet?”

“Ascetic. How was…” he almost said Earth, because, and of course he realized this just then, he wanted to tell Wayne who he was, he wanted…

He wanted the Wayne that didn’t call him tiger to talk to him about politics and engineering, and he wanted to not be a booty-call for some fucking billionaire who had no more sense than a goldfish.

“Gotham?” he concluded instead.

“Boring without you,” Wayne purred. “I believe you once said something about sex in a mansion?”

Hal nodded, and leaned back into Wayne’s chest, and tilted his head so it rested against his shoulder.

Wayne ran his hand down Hal’s chest in an overt display of possessiveness and sexuality, and Hal jerked away.

“No,” Hal said. They’d lost three planets entirely, and he’d almost lost himself to the howling fear, and he deserved better than to be a billionaire’s casual thing. “I mean, yes. I did. But I can’t do this anymore. This can’t be a thing. If we do this, that makes fourteen—no, thirteen times, and I won’t—“

He ran his hand through his hair and tried to make eye contact but Wayne was already scouting out the next pretty piece of ass, and Hal shook his head violently. “Twelve is enough.”

Wayne didn’t respond, so Hal walked out of the party and into the Metropolis night.


	5. Take a Step Back

Four months later, Hal finally made it to Gotham. Granted, it was with a team of Lanterns investigating an alien drug ring, but he couldn’t help but feel a little smug that he, Bruce Wayne’s former… whatever… had finally made it to the billionaire’s home town.

“This land stinks of decay and depravity,” someone intoned from behind him, and Hal flipped him the bird. It wasn’t any worse than Detroit, really, and some other planets were real shitholes.

And these guys hadn’t even heard of the Bosnian War or the Haitian Revolution.

They’d been tracking this particular product for about a week, and the rings were only so useful, so once they were on the ground it was up to them to sort dealer from junkie, which wasn’t easy going with four ‘assistants’ who were completely unfamiliar with Earth or her cultures and idiosyncrasies. And unlike Hal, they were utterly resistant to the idea that they might not have a damned clue what was going on.

Plus, he was in Gotham, and Gotham meant—

“Who are you,” a voice rasped flatly from the shadows.

“Hey, Batman!” Hal greeted cheerfully on a guess. Which wasn’t a guess so much a certainty because of all the various costumed sorts in Gotham, only one would be willing to confront him on this trespass. “I’m Green Lantern, and… well, so are they. Hadn’t really thought that through. Can I just say, Gotham is really growing on me. Almost as nice as Paris, really.”

“Leave.”

“Well, about that—“

“How dare you order us around!”

Hal flinched. “Shut up guys, I’ve got this—“

“Leave _now_.”

“Seems like some people from our turf may have retreated onto your turf, possibly in an effort to incite _exactly_ this clash of wills, and really, I’ll be out of your—cowl—in a matter of hours. We just need to—“

A little boy screaming got everyone’s attention, and while the rest of the alpha males were sorting themselves out, Hal was already leaping into the alley to find a bunch of junkies (and so _that’s_ the unknown effect it had on human physiology,) advancing on a child who’d apparently gotten trapped in a rotting pile of pallets.

Maybe Gotham was terrible after all.

“Hey, ugly!” Hal snapped, and maybe his first construct wasn’t exactly creative, but the anvil got the job done. With his assailants distracted, the kid got himself free of the trash, and then he leaped onto the fire escape and dropped back into the fray.

Which… Hal had been pretty sure Robin was a myth. A new addition to the already impressive urban legend of the Dark Knight of Gotham. But here he was, dexterous and violent and painfully young.

They sorted out the junkies together, and Hal couldn’t resist the urge to clap the kid on the back and squeeze his shoulder with approval. “Excellent work, Robin,” he added for good measure.

The kid gave him a long, assessing look. “Batman’s probably in all sorts of trouble without me,” he said with the sort of self-assurance that only a kid that young could muster.

“Need a lift?” Hal asked, focusing to form a hot air balloon instead of a boring bubble to lift them. The kid’s lips parted, the only visible reaction he gave, then he shrugged and hopped in. Hal’s back was killing him just watching the kid move so easily.

Once they were back on the roof, Hal had to build a construct between Batman and his fellow Corpsmen because they were already exchanging blows, and _no_.

Robin ignored the construct entirely to dart ahead to Batman’s side, and Hal created and closed a kid-sized entrance with barely a thought in order to accommodate him.

Everyone was looking at him.

“So it turns out the juice turns everyone into a raging mob willing to assault little kids,” he said. “Who knew?”

“That’s what you’re here for.” Batman… sort of asked. The guy was about as friendly as that mob had been, and probably exponentially more dangerous.

“Yeah, it’s kind of… spacey. In origin.”

“Well, that explains it then, B,” Robin interjected. “You guys can stay, but you’d better get it off the streets fast.” The little kid grinned a Batman-esque grin and Hal’s stomach dropped down somewhere between his knees. “Or else,” he added.

“No problemo, Robin,” Hal said. “Scout’s honor. Also, next time leave the ‘or else’ implicit. It has more impact that way.”

He gave them both a lazy salute and took his men and made for the opposite end of the city. Fast.

***

Hal was spending the night in a shitty motel before trying to make his way back to Coast City and Carol in the morning when Batman broke in. He wasn’t really all that surprised, not even when the big B greeted him by name.

“Hal Jordan,” he said, and there was a dry layer of amusement there that Hal had always been a sucker for in a man, a fact which had gotten him into more trouble than not.

“That’s me,” he said. “How’d you guess?”

“We’ve met.”

And that _should_ surprise him, but he’d been in the service for 10 years, and he’d rubbed plenty of elbows before and since, so it really just… didn’t.

“Marine?” he asked instead. “You don’t move like a Marine, but every Marine I’ve ever met is just as bugnuts as you are, so, the question stands.”

Batman laughed, a low rumble of amusement that flickered and died before Hal could really analyze it, and he preened because it may have been fleeting, but he’d made Batman _laugh_. Carol was _not_ going to believe him.

“Go to sleep, Jordan. I want you out of my city as soon as humanly possible.”

“Yeah, yeah. You know, I’ve seen the kid and I’m suddenly a lot less intimidated by you.”

“You’re lying.”

He really really was.

It wasn’t until he was doing his laundry the next Saturday that he found the plain white card with a phone number on it and the note ‘Next time, call first’.

He programmed it into his phone, because Batman had a point. He programmed it as ‘Big B’ because he had a sadistic sense of humor, even when directed at himself.

The next time he had domestic issues in Coast City, he called the number, much to his own surprise.

“You’re dropping in,” Batman didn’t ask.

“No, no, nothing like that. I just… happen to have an assassin-shaped problem in Coast City that I was wondering if you wanted to collaborate on, maybe?”

Even to his own ears, it seemed like a bullshit excuse, but it was his bullshit excuse, so he toughed it out.

Batman hung up on him.

“Asshole,” he grumbled at the phone, even as it blinked the words “Call ended” at him in mockery.

So he was completely surprised when Batman dropped in on him while he was trying to keep what felt like the _entire goddamned League of Assassins_ from breaking into the Coast City history museum, which, in retrospect, was kind of shortsighted on his part.

“Thanks,” he said, when they were breathing hard and most of the assassins had grabbed their unconscious brethren and retreated.

Batman didn’t reply, though he did clap Hal’s shoulder with enough strength to make Hal wobble slightly, which, coupled with the adrenaline of the fight, was kind of a turn on. Hal turned to him and dragged him up for a kiss, and Batman tasted oddly metallic and not at all like a person, and Hal wondered briefly, hysterically, if Batman was actually a robot, when hands were suddenly cupping his shoulders, gentler than he’d ever have pictured Batman being, and he was being disengaged.

“Sorry, sorry,” he whispered hoarsely into the night air, aware that he’d just sexually assaulted the most intimidating vigilante out there.

“I don’t do casual,” Batman growled, and Hal nodded.

“Okay, gotcha. It’s just the fight. And the cape: weirdly hot, you know?” Also the daring last minute rescue that had taken him by complete surprise. Which led to: “Where’s your sidekick, anyway? I guess with the time difference it’s probably past his bedtime.”

“Robin doesn’t leave Gotham,” Batman said firmly.

Hal nodded. “Okay, but is that your rule or his preference?”

Batman paused, tilting his head slightly, and Hal thought as the moment stretched that he might actually answer. 

And then he didn’t, and he was gone, and Hal shrugged.


	6. Comes Creeping In

The next morning he woke up stiff and aching, and his phone had 18 missed text messages, most of them from friends who had slipped into casual acquaintances since he’d gotten the ring, all in varying states of “Don’t hit downtown tonight!!!” and “Are you all right????”

Except for one from Big B.

_Most people tell me I am corrupting him, and accuse me of child endangerment when that topic comes up. He is as free as any minor under an adult’s care to come and go, but *Robin* stays in Gotham._

The text rubbed Hal the wrong way, and it wasn’t until he was in the sky trying to kill a navigation system with a series of barrel rolls that it hit him.

Batman was justifying himself to Hal.

 _Batman_ was justifying himself to _Hal_.

He hadn’t told Carol about having Batman on speed dial, so he couldn’t exactly go to her for advice, but he did anyway.

“Hey pretty girl,” he said. “How about some sugar.” Her fist was unerring in its aim for his gut, and he doubled over with an oomph. “Yeah,” he wheezed. “You know what I like.”

“What is it now, Hal,” she said, sounding testy and harried. He assessed the paperwork overflowing her work desk and left for coffee.

When she had had the first few sips of her latte, he started in the middle.

“So a guy I know is trying to justify his actions regarding his kids to me.”

Carol raised a slow eyebrow. “Are you dating him? Are you unsure if that means you’re dating him, because if you’re unsure, then I’ll save you telling me the rest of the story: it means you’re dating him.”

“Well,” Hal said, “No. We aren’t like that.”

“Do you want to be like that?” Carol asked, draining the last of her latte and making a grab for his. He’d only gotten it for her to drink anyway, so he let her have it with only a token resistance.

Hal considered that.

“No,” he said after a few moments thought. “He’s hot, and I’d totally say yes to sex with him, because… But, I don’t want to be the guy he justifies his actions with his kids to.”

Carol set down her latte and narrowed her eyes at him. “Is it another Lantern?”

“No!” Hal said. “Not… not that the guys aren’t great, of course.”

“Yes, of course, aside from their blatant and frankly insulting propensity to view humans as so vastly inferior that it’s simply _shocking_ that we have _clothing_.”

“They aren’t that bad,” he muttered.

“But aside from that, you wouldn’t bone any of them.”

“I am pretty sure we’re not biologically compatible. Some of them describe things that…” he shuddered. “No.”

“So who is it then?”

Hal stared at her.

“Batman,” which he hadn’t meant to admit, but it was _Carol,_ and he’d known her since forever.

She stared back at him. Finally, she sighed. “If you didn’t want to tell me, you could have just said so instead of lying, Hal.”

“Right,” Hal said, turning and leaving “Have fun with the paperwork, Carol.”

Outside on the airfield, he watched as a tour group went through, smiling, excited kids and long-suffering parents, and he thought about Batman trying to justify his actions regarding Robin to him.

 _i dunno what i did to warrant that,_ he started to type, and then he erased all of it.

_well, he’s always welcome in coast city if you change your mind. i hear we have an excellent history museum._

***

He didn’t really think anything of it until about a month later when suddenly there was a preteen kid in Carol’s living room.

“Fix it,” Carol said, and then she left, presumably to go to work.

“So,” Hal said. “Hi.”

The kid smiled at him and adjusted his wraparound sunglasses. “Hey,” he replied. “So B is busy with… something…” the grimace was telling, “and Gotham is kind of…”

“Yeah,” Hal said, because he watched the news kind of obsessively. “So. Robin? Rob? What do I call you, kid?”

“Whatever you want,” the kid said, still smiling, and damn if that grin wasn’t infectious.

He fished out his phone to text Carol: _so it turns out we’re babysitting for batman_

Her reply was instantaneous: _You’re babysitting for Batman. I have work to do._

“How do you feel about history?” Hal asked, grasping at straws.

So it basically figured that there would be an attempted alien invasion while Batman had left his kid sidekick with Hal for the weekend, but at least the help didn’t go amiss.

“You know, you’re way cooler than the Green Arrow,” Robin shouted at him as he whipped a batarang into the crowd of invading aliens. “I’d actually go so far as to call you the coolest green superhero I’ve met.”

“Gee, thanks kid,” he said, narrowly ducking a smoke grenade and getting a construct whipped up around the two of them that kept them safe.

“Handy,” Robin said.

Hal grunted acknowledgement, but the assault was coming from all directions and he only had so much attention to draw on.

“Sorry if you die,” he gritted out approximately .03 seconds before he passed out.

***

Hal woke up in a completely unfamiliar location and only just barely didn’t panic because he still had his ring and wasn’t restrained.

“Hey, you’re awake,” a familiar voice said. “It wasn’t supposed to happen on my shift, hang on.”

Hal tilted his head to see Robin, looking perfectly healthy and alive.

“Oh good,” Hal said. “I thought maybe I’d managed to get my very first babysitting client killed.”

Robin laughed. “I’m tougher than I look.”

“Have to be, wouldn’t you,” Hal said musingly.

“B! Get down here!” Robin hollered. “Sit tight,” he ordered, and then he flitted away, and Hal shut his eyes.

“He doesn’t appear to be awake,” Hal heard, and he groaned a little. Batman.

“I so did not mean for aliens to attack us.”

“I imagine it’s a risk that comes with the job.”

“Why am I here? I assume here is Gotham. Your lair?”

“The Batcave,” Batman confirmed, and Hal snickered.

“Why do people take you so seriously?” he demanded. “I mean, okay, it’s not like you’re just some guy dressed in a bat costume, my money’s still on vampire, but—“

“I am not a vampire.”

“Whatever, I’ll figure you out, but my point was, the _Batcave?_ ” Hal was having difficulty holding back laughter.

“Yes.”

“Why am I here?”

“Your companions were going to take you to… Oa? But Carol Ferris refused to let them. Something about human anatomy and physiology, I believe.”

“Yeah, not exactly the Guardians’ strong suit,” Hal said, trying to sit up and failing. He stared at the bandage on his chest and, after a moment to catch his breath, added “I don’t remember getting stabbed.”

“According to Robin’s report, it happened immediately upon the dissolution of your… green…”

“Construct,” Hal supplied. “It’s a construct of pure will. Unfortunately, will isn’t much good when you’re unconscious.”

“Hm,” Batman said, and there was a texture to that contemplative hum that was oddly familiar. “When you are well, I’d like more information for my database.”

“Right,” Hal said. “I’m pretty sure it’s not a secret, so that’s cool. You’ve explained why I’m not on Oa, not why I’m here.”

“Your fellow Lanterns insisted that you get adequate medical care. I swore to them that I would see to it; they didn’t seem willing to take Carol’s word for it.”

Hal groaned. “Well, that’s going to suck next time I see her.”

“I imagine so,” Batman said, and there was a sardonic quirk to his smile that plowed straight through to Hal’s libido and reminded him that, hey, he hadn’t had sex since he’d broken up with Bruce Wayne.

He grimaced. Why the hell had he done that, again?

“Are you in pain?” Batman asked, standing abruptly to check Hal’s IV lines.

“No, nothing like that. I mean—ugh. You’re Batman, right, so you probably already figured it out, but, I was Bruce Wayne’s booty call for, like, a year and a half and I just remembered about the part where I broke up with him and the part where I’m a moron because who the hell breaks it off with a billionaire who wants no-strings sex?”

Batman made a funny choking noise, and Hal patted his hand. “See? You agree. Carol was all about the ‘If it was what you needed, it’s a good choice,’ and my emotional health and well-being, but _you_ see why it was dumb, don’t you?”

Batman said nothing.

Hal narrowed his eyes. “Unless it’s the fact that we’re both guys? Because screw you if that’s it.”

“That is most assuredly not my problem,” Batman said acerbically.

“Well. Okay.”

“So why _did_ you break up with him; was he hitting you?”

Hal groaned. “Okay, no. No I am not having this conversation with you. Or with anyone ever. No.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, and then Hal said “I wanted to tell him about being a Lantern. Not… not that that’s really that big of a secret, but. Like, I realized I wanted a relationship that wasn’t just Parisian getaways and knee-melting wall-sex, and that was. Well, it wouldn’t be fair to myself to keep hooking up with him if I had different goals than him, would it?” Hal sighed. “Basically, as in everything, Carol was right.”

“Hm.”

“Is that why you don’t do casual?”

“What?” Batman demanded, looking as hunted as a man in a cowl possibly could.

“You said, with the League of Assassins and the museum and the pass I made, that you didn’t do casual. Is it because of the secret identity?”

“Yes.”

“Great,” Hal said. “So I’m doomed to spend the rest of my life not having sex and it’s all Bruce Wayne’s fault.”

Robin came in on the middle of that and burst into peals of laughter, barely managing to set a tray near the bed without upsetting it.

“Go back upstairs, Robin,” Batman said, sounding tired. Hal was doing his damnedest not to turn bright red and probably failing.

“Eat up, okay?” Robin managed to get out between laughing, and his mirth trailed him all the way ‘upstairs’.

“It’s probably the near-death adrenaline,” Hal said sagely.

Batman just stared at him, which he was almost getting used to, despite how inhuman the cowl made him. “Are you a robot, then?” Hal asked. “Since you aren’t a vampire.”

“No,” Batman said. “You should eat and get some more rest. I’ll take you back to Coast City once I’ve checked you over again.”


	7. Burned Too Bright

It wasn’t actually a surprise to climb out of the plane after a test flight to a text from Big B with nothing but a set of coordinates.

The surprising part was that the coordinates took him to a public library in a small town in Kansas, and he stepped inside, still in uniform, with some trepidation.

“They’re in the basement,” the librarian said warmly, pointing to some stairs. Hal smiled a thank you and tossed a casual salute her way before taking the stairs at a jog.

 _They_ were in a conference room, a whole group of people he knew by face and reputation but he’d never met.

“Wow, okay, I have a feeling there’s a kid’s table somewhere that I’m missing,” he said as he walked in, taking an empty seat next to Batman because there were two, and Batman was the only one in the room he remotely knew.

That, it turned out, was the worst thing he could have picked to open with, because the Black Canary cast him a dismissive glance before picking up a tirade he’d apparently interrupted.

“The fact remains: you have told us on multiple occasions that he didn’t leave Gotham, and he clearly did.”

“Wait, is this about Robin?” Hal asked. “Because I don’t know that I have a horse in this race, and there was a show on ABC tonight I wanted to check out.”

“You were _stabbed_ protecting Batman’s sidekick. I think you do have a stake in what happens here,” the Green Arrow pointed out, and Hal stared at him, remembering Robin’s comment about Hal being the cooler of the two.

“I was stabbed in an alien invasion, which are basically my raison d’etre. Basically, no alien invasions, no Green Lantern.”

“Batman has assured us on many occasions that Robin doesn’t leave Gotham.”

Hal stared at Superman.

“Oooo-kaaay,” he said. “So… Wait. Your solution to the kid Robin is the vigilante equivalent of grounding him? What about his civilian ID? He goes on a class trip to Metropolis, or, I don’t know, how’s this for a choice, _Coast City_ ; I hear there’s a history museum downtown, and there’s, say, an alien invasion, and wham, the kid’s supposed to hunker down and play civilian?”

“Yes! It’s not in Gotham, it’s not his concern,” the Black Canary said. 

“Well, pardon my bias, but I happen to feel that alien invasions are concerning to everyone around, even those not directly experiencing them.”

“And yet you had to split your attention in order to protect him. You have to understand, Green Lantern, we’re advocating on your behalf here, and on the behalf of the child.”

“You know nothing about me or the kid,” Hal said. “You don’t know what happened! The kid probably pulled me out of range of whatever was taking out my constructs, right, Batman?”

Batman nodded slightly.

“See? And I’m going to go back to the kid—when I was his age, I wasn’t gonna stop doing what I had it in my fool head to do for God or anybody; I bet the same applies here, and—“

“Batman has assured us that his sidekick is quite safe. This incident merely proves that—“

“Protégé,” Batman said softly.

All eyes turned to him. “He is my protégé. He is not my _sidekick,_ and he is a rational being worthy of everyone’s respect, not just Green Lantern’s.”

Batman left.

Hal stared at the open door he’d disappeared through for several long moments.

“Look, I don’t know if you’re trying to be some sort of superhero regulatory body or something, but leave the man alone about his kid. We don’t know their story, and the kid’s been doing this for a year now, if you believe the rumors. It’s obvious that it’s working for them.”

“That poor little boy,” Black Canary said. “If I had even an inkling of where to find him—“

“Apparently,” Hal said, standing up and pulling up a construct. “He’s only allowed to be in Gotham, even when aliens are invading and a vigilante’s life is on the line. Maybe you should start there.”

He left a little bit less perfectly than Batman, but he was getting used to that.

He didn’t really think about where he was going when he ended up in Gotham, and then he had no idea where to look for Batman, which rankled because it made Black Canary right and that was just _vexing_.

Batman found him though, and he had ice cream which went a long way to soothing Hal’s riled emotions.

“Where’s Robin?” Hal asked, accepting his ice cream and indicating the third cone Batman held.

“That bad, B?” Robin said, and Hal absolutely did not jump in startlement at the voice behind him.

“It’s fine, Robin,” Batman said, and Hal decided to cross ‘robot’ off the list at the wealth of emotion forced into those three words.

“It’s not your fault I got stabbed, kid,” Hal said. “Hell, I’m willing to lay money that you saved my ass a couple of times.

Robin shrugged, “I know that.”

Hal licked at his cone to cover his skepticism.

“You’re still officially welcome in Coast City, wunderkind,” Hal said. 

Robin nodded seriously. “I’ll hold off for awhile though. I wouldn’t want aliens to invade again so soon.”

Hal snorted laughing, and a quick glance over at Batman revealed the other vigilante’s amusement as well.

***

“I think Batman might be my boyfriend,” Hal told Carol. He’d brought three lattes this time as a peace offering, but there were circles under her eyes that made him wonder if he needed to choke on his pride and give Big W a text.

“Mhm,” Carol said, thumbing through a contract and sipping on her coffee.

“Except without the sex.”

Carol froze. “You’re _not_ having sex with Batman?”

“No. But he invited me to join his super secret superhero posse, and also his kid likes me.”

“You don’t even know if Robin is _his_ kid,” Carol pointed out reasonably, even as she scribbled out a line correction and initialed it. He obediently scrawled his own initials next to hers as a witness even though he had no idea what she’d written.

“Well, either he is, or Robin’s parents are neglectful morons and Robin would be better off if he _were_ Batman’s kid, so I think it’s a moot point.”

“Probably . What’s his name?”

Hal froze.

“See, that’s the problem, isn’t it?”

“Yeah; I’m a moron. First I broke up with Bruce Wayne because I couldn’t tell him my secret identity, and now I… now Batman isn’t comfortable telling me his. I just…”

“You’re trustworthy,” Carol assured him without hesitation.

“I love you, Care,” he replied. He definitely didn’t say it enough.

“You’d better,” she replied, but her hand sought out his and squeezed an i-love-you-too.


	8. Part of Me Knew

The rest of the vigilantes started collaborating with him then. He figured he should be grateful for that, and it wasn’t like he couldn’t use the help. In fact, their assistance and cooperation meant that he had more time to help _Carol_ out wherever he could, and the dark circles under her eyes were starting, thankfully, to clear up.

Batman was still the only one out of the lot of them that he actively trusted and sought out, but he was pretty sure that none of them knew that, not even Batman, and he wasn’t going to spoil that illusion anytime soon.

So actually the next time aliens invaded earth he was neck deep in diplomatic talks on a world that thought genocide was the answer to basically everything. He was utterly sick of the constant shouting and the dead alien children that kept appearing, strung up and mutilated, on the building they were holding the talks in.

He got back to Earth after six days of interminable ‘talks’ and wanted nothing more than to curl up in the spare bed in Carol’s apartment and sleep for about a week.

A Jacuzzi would be nice too, while he was dreaming. As soon as he hit cell range, his phone lit up, and he answered it with a curt “I’m on my way.”

“Hal?” and of course he sounded scared. “Hal, there’s some weird stuff going on in Gotham and I can’t find Batman.”

“Please tell me this is new,” Hal said. “Please lie and tell me this happened this morning and not five days ago.”

“Actually, I haven’t seen him in over a week,” Robin said, and there was a thread of panic in his voice. “But that’s normal. But then about three days ago, I was looking at some stuff, and it seems like crime’s stopped.”

“Robin, do me a favor and meet me at… the Batsignal I guess? I’m about to be going too fast for cell service.”

He didn’t wait for a reply.

He beat Robin to the signal, but there was someone waiting for him, regardless.

“Uh, so, hi?” he said, staying well out of grabbing distance. He was just glad he’d recharged the ring before heading back Earthside.

“You’re Robin’s ‘friend’?” the guy asked, sounding by parts wary and amused and exhausted.

“Well, better me than the Green Arrow, I figure,” Hal said, equally wary and amused and exhausted.

“Ugh, I hate that guy,” Robin said from behind Hal. Hal wondered if hugging was appropriate, here, and decided not to worry about it when he saw the way the kid’s arms were wrapped around himself.

“And no one blames you for it,” Hal said, crouching to tug the kid close. Robin sighed into his ear, and Hal rubbed his back. He wondered, for the first time, how old the kid actually was. Ten, he thought. If that.

“Okay,” Robin said, drawing back. The other occupant of the roof had relaxed a lot of his wariness, and Hal nodded at him, relaxing a little himself. Anyone who used Robin as a metric of trustworthiness was okay in his book.

“So Batman’s missing, and crime’s gone down?” Hal asked.

“No,” the stranger said. “Crime’s _stopped_.”

“Define stopped.”

“Not even a mugging since about an hour past Robin’s last reported contact with him.”

“Prostitution? Drugs?”

The guy shook his head. “Nothing. Not even jaywalking or moving violations; and believe me we’ve had our eyes out.”

Hal pursed his lips. “Okay, and this is going to sound crazy, but have you tried _committing_ any crimes?”

Robin laughed.

“Vigilantism is technically illegal—“ the guy started, only for Robin to interrupt.

“Yeah, but am I really being a vigilante if there’s no crime being committed to stop?”

“So, what do you suggest we do?” the guy asked.

“Rob a jewelry store?” Hal suggested. “That seems like the sort of thing—I’ll do it though. But, I can’t be a Lantern to do it; it probably won’t let me.”

“Don’t worry,” Robin said. “I’ll find you a costume.”

It turned out that if he tried to commit a crime, he forgot his intentions just before following through. He had to be reminded by the other two why they were even in front of a jewelry store.

“Well, that’s a wash,” Hal said.

“Maybe we should call Superman,” the guy suggested.

Hal whirled on him. “Excuse me but who the hell are you again?”

“Gotham Police Commissioner James Gordon,” the man replied. “And you are?”

“I mostly go by my job title, Jim,” Hal said. “I’m a Green Lantern and it’s my job to keep the universe safe for all life forms.”

“Isn’t Gotham a little bit out of the way for you, then?”

Hal stared at him and thought about that. “Yeah, no. Gotham is just as much my responsibility as any other part of this sector.”

“I can’t track Batman, I’ve tried,” Robin said. “Can you?”

Hal considered that, considered everything else his ring could do. “I honestly don’t know. I mean, I can scan for non-terrestrial life, but I’ve never really tried for a specific person before.”

Robin nodded.

“But I’ll try,” he said, scowling at his ring and trying to focus.

And that was when shit got weird.

“Okay,” he said calmly after analyzing the readings on his ring. “So we’ve got a problem.”

“I’m shocked to hear this,” the Commissioner said dryly.

Hal snorted.

“You normally have 68 aliens hiding in the docks with a handful of humans?”

Robin shook his head slowly; “Do you think Batman’s there?”

Hal sighed, because this was where doing his job sucked. “Doesn’t really matter; I’ve got to check it out anyway. They could be refugees, and it’s my job—“

Robin interrupted him. “We’re coming with you.”

Hal wanted to protest that, images of dead alien children still fresh in his mind, but he wasn’t actually stupid enough to try to deny Robin anything. The kid would just follow him, and then Hal wouldn’t even be able to keep an eye on him.

There were, in total, eleven people in a cage at the center of the dockside warehouse the aliens had taken as their own.

“Hi,” Hal said, walking in the front door and scanning the room. “I’m a Green Lantern. I’ve noticed you guys are holing up down here and I was just wondering if there was anything I could do to help? Maybe… take those humans off your hands?”

One of the people in the cage was heavily pregnant. She was sharing what appeared to be Batman’s cape with a little girl who was dull-eyed and shivering. Hal did his level best to keep an open mind—if these aliens were just running scared, of course they’d react stupidly.

“These are necessary for the settlement.”

Hal nodded. “Okay, so… what needs to be settled so we can let these people go home?”

Finally, finally he spotted Batman, and he let himself relax slightly, which was idiotic, but, well, _Batman._ Hal’s current bet was on the guy having been bitten by a radioactive bat and/or being part extraterrestrial; either way, Batman knew how to handle himself in a crisis.

“It is active. No more is needed.”

“So… by settlement you mean whatever is causing the crime to stop?” Hal asked.

“Yes. This.”

“Well, that’s—okay, so unfortunately, while I’m required to support you in your resettlement efforts, any activity that directly interferes with another rational being’s free exercise of their will is straight up illegal, so, I’m going to have to ask you to stop that.”

The aliens laughed.

Hal sighed and shut his eyes, and then with what little will and energy he had left, he slammed down prison bars, containing the aliens before they could even consider moving against him or worse, against Robin and the Commissioner.

“So, I’m afraid you guys are under arrest. I have a question though—why didn’t your magic anti-crime tech prevent you guys from committing crime?”

The aliens were screaming protests, and Hal was sending out an SOS to any Lanterns in the vicinity to take care of this crap, and Robin was already unlocking the cage with the humans at the center.

Robin and Batman and the Commissioner oversaw the rescue, and Hal did his best not to waver.

Once the ambulances had gone, Robin raced to Batman’s side and stopped just short of touching him. Batman crouched down to make eye contact with his protégé, and while Hal couldn’t tell what words were being exchanged, he was pretty sure they were the sort of thing that proved the rest of the vigilante community was talking out their collective ass when it came to the two of them.

Oddly, Batman sent the other two away while he stayed behind to wait out the other representatives from the Lantern Corps.

“You found me,” Batman said.

“Yeah, well, I don’t think I could stand how much easier my life would be if you’d stayed lost.”

“Hm,” Batman said. “The same applies to you.”

Hal knew it was stupid, but he let the grin spread across his face and bumped his shoulder against Batman’s. “So what about alien? Are you an alien?”

“No,” Batman said.

“I’ll figure it out eventually,” Hal replied.

“That would be quite the feat,” Batman said, and his little twisty grin was exactly enough to give Hal the will necessary to keep the constructed prisons from wavering.

“This whole thing is going to be a mess. You may need to testify to the Universal Court; especially if they really were just running scared like I suspect.”

“It will be fine,” Batman said, and he reached up to squeeze Hal’s shoulder, and Hal leaned into the contact. “How was your mission?”

“Godawful,” Hal said. “Believe it or not, this is less depressing than that mission was.”

“I’ll book you a hotel room.”

From anyone else, Hal would have taken that as a come on, but from Batman he took it as comradely concern for his wellbeing with a dash of intra-city hospitality.

Still, maybe he’d get that Jacuzzi after all.


	9. Comes Crashing In

So, suddenly all however many thousand Lanterns thought he was sleeping with Batman, which was altogether awkward on several levels, the most obvious being that while Hal wasn’t actually sleeping with Batman, he was pretty sure he wanted to be.

“How is your mate?” was added to the repertoire of small talk he had to share with the other Lanterns, and it didn’t matter how much he protested, the only response he would get in return was a hand clapped on his shoulder and reassurances that many among the Lantern Corps managed to find and maintain long term partnerships and that he needn’t hide it from them.

It was enough for him to drive his head through a wall.

It was enough for him to text Big W.

_i haven’t gotten laid in almost 2 years._

The reply was, almost unexpectedly, a date, time, and location. Hal stared at his phone for long moments, then shrugged. It wasn’t like Wayne wasn’t an excellent time. After all, he’d adopted that one kid while Hal’d been in ‘Tibet’; maybe he was just as lacking in the sex department as Hal. He’d heard kids were terrible on your sex life.

Not that he had any experience with kids outside of Robin, but still.

They had sex in the dark, and Hal had almost-but-not-quite forgotten the violence of it, of getting off with Bruce Wayne, and while it was as knee-meltingly, back-breakingly fantastic as it always had been, it felt stupid and selfish and wrong.

“Ugh, I’m a total asshole, sorry,” Hal said.

“How so, tiger?” Wayne asked, nipping at Hal’s chest.

“I’ve just… got a lot of stuff going on, and I shouldn’t have texted you.”

“Hm, well, I can’t say _I_ minded too terribly,” Wayne said, rolling up to his elbow to look Hal in the eye. “This was only ever casual, after all.”

Hal groaned. “Believe me, I got that memo.”

Wayne kissed him, long and hard and thorough, almost mean.

When they broke apart again, Hal drummed his fingers on the bed and tried to come up with something, anything to say that wasn’t ‘Oh, by the way, I’m a member of an elite intergalactic police force. Isn’t that just insane. Please marry me.’

“I heard you adopted a kid?”

Wayne stilled. “Yeah, he’s quite the survivor. I was at the show the night his parents died. Couldn’t help but lend a hand where I could, you know?”

“Yeah, no, makes sense,” even though it really didn’t. Older kids didn’t get adopted by strangers. Older kids got half-raised by family members or they got put into the system. “He a good kid?”

“The best,” Wayne gushed. “You’d adore him.”

“Hmm, I’m not exactly meet-the-family material though, am I?” Hal asked. After all, casual didn’t meet the kids. Wayne didn’t bother pretending otherwise, just kissed him again.

***

As it turned out, the media loved it when Bruce Wayne went out with an old flame, and he made headlines all over the country. CNN was reporting on their rekindled romance, and Hal promptly got extremely drunk all over Carol’s living room.

“The best is the part where you cheated on Batman with Bruce Wayne,” Carol told him, offering him another shot of tequila.

Hal groaned, waited for the glass to resolve itself to a single image, and then knocked it back, biting down hard on the lime to keep from immediately throwing the liquor back up.

“Because that’s like, two of the hottest people in the country. You’re two-timing the sexiest vigilante alive with the hottest billionaire on Earth. Hal, how the hell do you get into these messes?”

“He’s gonna know,” Hal said.

“Who is?” Carol asked. She was a little drunk herself.

“Batman. He’s going to know I slept with Wayne.”

“And you still call him by his last name. For shame, Hal,” Carol said, tsking and wagging her finger at him. “ _Everyone_ knows you slept with Wayne. Besides, I thought you two weren’t dating.”

“We _aren’t_. I just sort of…”

“Wanted to be?”

“He’s nice,” Hal mumbled into his elbow. He wasn’t exactly sure when he’d buried his face there, but it kept the room from spinning too badly, so he left it there.

Carol laughed. “He is known as the terror of the night and the Dark Knight of Gotham. He’s not _nice_.” She giggled harder. “Hell, I’ve met him, and he’s a total bastard, even to his sidekick.”

“Protégé,” Hal corrected blurrily.

“Whatever. My point is, he’s not nice.”

“Yes huh,” Hal said.

“Okay Hal, bedtime for two-timing assholes,” Carol said, and when she got him to his feet he swayed rather alarmingly and the room spun around no fewer eight times, but she remained unaffected. Carol was seriously the best. Why wasn’t he married to her?

“Because you’re a pansexual homoromantic asshole, and I’m way too classy to tolerate your bullshit.”

“I don’t even know what those words mean,” Hal protested.

“I’ll get you a pamphlet,” she promised.


	10. The Joke is on Me

As he’d suspected, Batman was needed to testify before the Universal Court. Also as he’d suspected, Batman knew he’d hooked up with Bruce Wayne.

“I feel like, before I spend the next forty-five minutes travelling faster than light in a glowing green bubble with you, we should clear the air.”

Batman cocked his head slightly, as good as an invitation to continue as he ever gave. “You’re pissed at me,” Hal said.

“Am I.”

Hal narrowed his eyes at Batman.

“You haven’t texted me with an emergency since those headlines hit,” Hal said. “I mean, maybe I’m wrong—Carol always says I’m way too self-involved—“

“You’re wrong, Hal,” Batman said, and there was none of his usual amusement there, just a cold, factual delivery.

“Ooo-kaaay,” Hal said. “That’s. Okay then. Are we, do you want to tell me what I did then? Because… Well. I probably didn’t mean to do it.”

“It’s nothing to concern you,” Batman said. “I believe we had a court date?”

So, that should be that. Hal knew, better than most people would assume, when to leave well enough alone, but the second they were in the courtroom, everything started going wrong.

“Someone,” a fellow Lantern leaned in to whisper conspiratorially, “is leaking pheromones.” At first, Hal thought it was directed at him, because of the tension between him and Batman, but then suddenly a being in medic’s clothes burst into the courtroom and ordered a double dozen species into quarantine immediately.

Hal had been doing this gig long enough that he raised his hand and when he had the medic’s attention, asked; “Hey, are humans susceptible? Earthlings, Solians, Homo Sapiens?”

It took the medic a moment to catch on, and then, predictably, she said, “What? They haven’t achieved interstellar flight yet—“

“Because I’m a human, and so’s this guy. Maybe. He hasn’t told me for sure either way.”

The woman went lavender as all the blood left her face, and she started screaming for her aides to get him and Batman into an isolation unit.

Hal was basically unmoved by this, because it was the fourth time it had happened to him, but Batman was looking a little flushed under his cowl, and Hal offered him a reassuring smile.

“It’s fine. They’re just not all that great at human physiology. Probably we won’t even be affected by this.”

Of course, they put shit like that in the dictionary right next to the phrase ‘Famous Last Words’.

Quarantine was a bare cube about two meters to an edge, and Hal felt instantly claustrophobic.

Batman paced, which made the feeling somehow worse.

“It’ll be fine, B,” Hal said, and Batman stopped short and looked at him.

“I’m too hot,” Batman said.

Hal stared at him. “Huh?”

“I’m too hot,” he repeated.

“Well, okay, all that leather and Kevlar and… cybernetic body-parts? Can’t be great for climate control.”

“I’m not a cyborg, and the suit is designed to be thermally regulated.”

Hal stared some more. “Okay, I don’t follow.”

“I shouldn’t be hot. Are you hot?”

“No?”

Batman ran a gauntleted hand over his face and slumped against one of the disgustingly uniform walls. It was the slump that got Hal’s attention, really. Batman did not _slump._

“Here, take off your cape and the gauntlets,” Hal said. “You want my help?”

“It’s psychosomatic, clearly,” came Batman’s utterly unhelpful reply.

“Or the ring is protecting me. It does that, you know?”

Batman didn’t even grunt acknowledgement, but he did shrug out of his cape and then rip off his gauntlets. He had really spectacular hands, Hal thought, and then he thought about having those hands against his skin, and—

“Come to think of it, I’m a little warm myself,” he said, surprised.

Well, fifth time was the charm, apparently, for stuff like this.

Batman looked at him. “You’re welcome to take off your own clothing,” he said, and it was a different sort of gravelly to normal, warm and helpless sounding.

“Right, wait, no. No, that would be unwise. Because… unwise.”

“No, I don’t think it would be,” Batman purred, and Jesus his sex voice was familiar. Had Hal’s fantasies been that accurate? Was he, in fact, currently only fantasizing?

“No, you don’t—not casual.”

Batman kissed him then, and Hal wondered when the hell he’d come across the room in order to be able to do so.

He still tasted like metal, and Hal pushed him away and asked, stupidly; “Why do you taste like money?”

Batman laughed, and the laugh was familiar too, low and amused and warm like velvet, and Hal was wracking his brain trying to place it.

“Prevents windchafing,” Batman replied, and Hal moaned.

“Don’t care. Kiss me.”

Batman was surprisingly obliging in that respect. He kissed careful and thorough, like this might be the only time he ever got to experience kissing, and Hal really, really liked that.

At least, he was pretty sure he did.

“You should… take off the rest. More. So you can cool down.”

“I am convinced that won’t help,” Batman said.

“Oh, I’ll… take off mine then?”

Batman replied by taking hold of the zipper on Hal’s flight suit and drawing it down. “Always wondered what flyboys wear under their uniform,” he said musingly, sounding calm despite the desperation painting the edges of his lips and the trembling of his fingertips.

Hal wondered when he’d lost that last, most basic construct. Hal wondered if it mattered.

“Turns out, not a lot,” Batman concluded, and then he was touching Hal, bare skin to bare skin, and Hal whined and arched up because he’d wanted this since approximately thirty seconds after he’d met Batman, and it was… amazing.

Hal’s fingers dug into the cracks in Batman’s armor quite without meaning to. “Don’t,” Batman said, and Hal jerked back immediately, eyes wide.

Batman patted Hal’s hands and then pressed his own fingers into the cracks in the armor, and it peeled off.

Hal flailed a little, trying to figure out if he was allowed to touch again or not.

“There’re traps, Hal,” Batman said. “Careful.” And then he grabbed Hal’s hand and pressed it to his chest, and God but that contact felt amazing.

“Okay, okay. You should… get the rest then. So nothing happens?”

“Hm,” Batman said, and then he was shucking his armor, peeling it off in great big sheets of black leather, and Hal tugged him close for his mouth. Batman’s hands moved across his skin with a deliberation that Hal couldn’t hope to match, and Hal arched up against him and dug his nails into Batman’s solid back.

“Wanted this,” Batman rasped into Hal’s ear. “Wanted you.”

Hal shook his head and laughed. “It’s okay if you didn’t. Pretty sure your super secret superhero posse handbook has a don’t ask don’t tell clause about pheromone induced sex.”

“Did,” Batman insisted, and he followed up on that assertion by going down on Hal.

It was probably really hilarious to be having sex with a man in a cowl, but that thought was a faint echo in the back of his head compared to the burning waves of _lust_ that were overwhelming him.

After their fourth go round, everything felt colder, crisper, and Hal rolled over to ask Batman if he was feeling better, pressing his palm to the absolute masterwork that was Batman’s shoulder.

“Mmm,” Hal said. “Your body is really fucking amazing, I hope you realize this, B.” He ran his fingers down Batman’s spine and traced a scar that would run around his waist and end half-an-inch from his navel, and froze.

He _knew_ that damned scar. He knew how it would taste, and how its owner would react to him tasting it; he knew it in a way that had nothing to do with the fuzzy, pheromone induced sex from earlier.

“Mother _fucker_ ,” he snarled, jerking his hand back and glaring at Batman. Batman woke up entirely for that outburst, and he sat up and stared at Hal. Hal ignored him, ignored _everything_ , and reached for his flight suit.

He needed clothes for this.

Or for this to not be happening, that would be _fine_ too.

“Hal—“

“You total and complete _douchebag_!” Hal bit out. “You—“

“Look,” Batman said, and his fingers slipped along the edges of the cowl, and then Hal was fully dressed where Batman—where Bruce _Motherfucking_ Wayne was completely naked, and it didn’t do a damned thing to make Hal feel better. “I wanted to say something, but the timing—“

“Oh? How about when you figured out _my_ ID and broke into my motel room to give me your card. Or maybe even after that, when I _told you how I felt about Bruce Wayne_ , was that the wrong time? Don’t you _dare_ act like the last time I texted you for a hookup wouldn’t have been a _perfect_ occasion to tell me. Were you really ever going to give up the game? Get your rocks off with me as Wayne and then have your stupid, intense, non-communicative _thing_ with me as Batman, and when I wasn’t around, laugh at me like I’m a freaking idiot?”

“I don’t think you’re an idiot, Hal,” Batman-Wayne said quietly.

“Don’t you? I’m not, you know. You don’t get into the Academy if you aren’t physically fit and at the top of your class. You don’t—God, I _am_ an idiot. I can’t _believe_ I thought Batman trusted me. ‘Oh, he lets me babysit his son’, except oh, by the way, Robin is probably better at hand to hand than I am, so what the hell, was he babysitting _me_?”

“Hal—“

“Don’t you mean _tiger?_ ” Hal demanded, and then a wall dropped away and four medics swarmed the room, so he didn’t have to worry about Goddamned Batman-Wayne anymore.

Batman still had to testify against his kidnappers, and Hal still had to ferry him home, which had to be the worst forty-five minutes of his entire life. Batman just _stared_ at him and Hal did his level best to pretend he was alone in his stupid will-bubble, eager to get home and fall asleep and then get roaringly drunk for the next, oh, basically, ever.


	11. Love Letter

Carol threw a bottle at him, and he caught it and stared at the label. “Is this moonshine?” he asked her.

“No, it just says so on the label because I felt like fucking with you. Seriously, Hal?”

Hal froze. She didn’t know, because he couldn’t tell her without compromising Batman’s secret identity, and Hal wasn’t that guy.

He refused to be.

“Okay, what did I say,” she asked, suddenly coming right up into his space and curling into his side like he’d known her all his life and she was allowed to violate his personal space whenever she felt like it.

“I had sex with Batman,” he said.

“Fucking finally. Why did that upset you?” 

“He’s an asshole. He was laughing at me the whole time, Carol, and I didn’t even suspect.”

“He was what? You aren’t making any sense, Hal. What was he—“

Her hand flew to her mouth and she shook her head. “Well. That’s. Something I guess. I was going to offer to go get some glasses, but fuck it all.” She unscrewed the top and took a long swig from the bottle before passing it to Hal.

“I’m a moron,” Hal told her.

Carol petted his neck. “Yeah, but not with this. This is firmly on him, the asshole. Don’t you dare try to take responsibility for it.”

He shut his eyes, and opened them on bright daylight and a hangover.

He had to get up, had to face his day, had to finally bury his stupid secret crush on Batman and his less secret lust for Bruce Wayne.

Had to save Coast City from a giant sea monster.

“So,” the Flash was saying once they’d trucked most of the sea monster remnants back out to sea. “Did you hear about Mount Justice?”

“Uh,” Hal said. “No?”

“Really? Weird. I thought you were almost as close with Bats as Superman is.”

“I… no. We’re not that close.”

The Flash made a querying noise, which Hal ignored for a whole thirty seconds, and finally he sighed, ran a hand over his face and grimaced.

“I misread the situation,” he said.

“Uh, you thought he just wanted to be friends?” The Flash asked, sounding confused. “Because you can’t be that—“

“No, no, we. Stuff happened at the Universal Court. Bad stuff. And I’m over it now.”

“Okay then.”

“Okay.”

The Flash patted his arm consolingly, and he _lingered_ , which was wholly unusual for him.

Hal mostly ignored him, and then when he couldn’t shake him, took him to the airfield.

“So, you’re actually a pilot then?” The Flash said, and then he slapped his own hand over his mouth. “Sorry,” he mumbled through his fingers. “I’m sorry, God, it’s so rude, I do understand secret identities.”

Hal shrugged and dropped the construct of his costume. “It’s not like I really care. I barely have a life outside the Lantern Corps these days.”

Flash nodded, and then in a whirlwind rush, was also in civilian clothes. “Barry Allen, it’s a pleasure.”

“Hal Jordan.”

Barry’s eyes got huge. “Oh. _Oh_! Is that—I mean. Sorry.”

“No, that’s… that’s really not it,” Hal said. Because while the fact that his defining characteristic was the he was Bruce Wayne’s longest-lived boytoy had a _lot_ to do with his and Batman’s falling out, it wasn’t in the way Barry was thinking, and to explain that would reveal some secrets that Batman-Wayne had gone to a great deal of effort to conceal.

Carol hollered his name and he obediently poked his head into her office. She brandished a coffee at him, and he took it, shaking it a little to see if it was for him or if she just wanted a refill. “I saw the sea monster. Sorry you were hungover and fighting a giant squid.”

Hal accepted the full coffee gravely, and then Barry peeked over his shoulder. Carol raised an eyebrow.

“Hi!” Barry said, waving a little. “I’m Hal’s friend Barry.”

“Pleasure,” Carol said. “I’ve heard… well. Nothing.”

“It’s a new friendship,” Barry said.

Carol snorted. “Go do your superhero thing in someone else’s office, boys. I’ve got actual work to get done.”

“Call me if you need a witness to sign anything!” Hal hollered over his shoulder as Barry dragged him away.

Hal showed Barry his own office, and Barry shut and locked the door.

“So I wanted to talk to you,” Barry said.

Hal made his eyes go wide; “ _Really?_ ” he asked breathlessly.

“Wow, you’re really as bad as everyone says, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, they don’t jokingly write ‘Doesn’t play well with others’ next to your name in the super-secret superhero posse directory if you aren’t an asshole,” Hal said. “What are we talking about?”

“Robin.”

“No,” Hal said. “I have made myself clear on at least six occasions; Robin isn’t our business.”

“Yeah, no, that’s… the thing. I may have accidentally acquired my own… and wow, sidekick really does feel insulting when you have one.”

“Protégé,” Hal offered. “And how?”

“My nephew. He, ah—he replicated the experiment I used? And now he’s like me. Fast.”

“Uh-huh. So, why are you telling me?”

“Because… I don’t know. Everyone always goes on and on about how Robin’s too young, and you’re the only non-Batman person who…”

“Barry, man, I don’t have a horse in this race.”

“Just; when they start telling me the same stuff, you’ll… you’ll do the same thing? You don’t just like Robin because you and Batman are… weird?”

“No,” Hal said. “I like Robin because he’s a little shit, just like I was as a kid, and because he’s great.”

“Wally’s great too!” Barry said eagerly. “Do you want to meet him?”

“Look, Barry. Have a protégé. Pretty sure your nephew just proves my point about Robin anyway: kids are going to do this stuff whether we condone it or not. Might as well watch their backs as mentors instead of trying to stop them so they decide to sneak around and maybe get hurt or killed.”

Barry nodded. “Okay. Okay. Yeah. Do you think he and Robin will get along?”

Hal sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Robin gets along with everyone. He gets along with Superman and Wonder Woman, even when they’re being… them. He gets along with _Batman_. Even I could barely manage that.”

“Right.”

“And, I’m just shooting in the dark here, but I’m pretty sure Robin has no idea how completely contentious his existence is. Probably for the best if your kid doesn’t know either.”

Barry nodded rapidly, and then he disappeared, and Hal tapped his ring against the wooden surface of his desk and pulled out some paper. He was going to write a goddamned policy brief for the group (and they so completely needed an actual name) on underage protégés, and he was going to bully every member into signing it.

It would probably take his mind off of Batman-Wayne, at least for a little while.

“Read this,” Hal demanded, four hours and six drafts later. Carol took the page from him and her eyes flicked rapidly across it.

“Ugh, this reads like DoD Instructions,” she said.

“Were you banking on a love letter?” Hal asked. Knowing her, she probably had been.

“Hal, babe, I’m going to tell you this from a place of caring and trust: this _is_ a love letter.”

“You said it read like DoD Instructions; that’s not a love letter. An _Air Force_ Instruction, maybe—“

“Hal.” Carol set the page down and ran her hand over it. “Hal, you were an officer for _ten years_. You went to the Air Force Academy for four years before that.”

Hal nodded. “I know this,” he said slowly.

“This? This policy brief? It’s a love letter because you’re an emotionally constipated moron who can’t decide if he’s hurt enough to stop pursuing a relationship that he’s broken off at least twice.”

“This is important!” Hal snapped. “This is so that those of us who have kids ready and eager to follow in our footsteps don’t have to be afraid to take them on and train them and protect them, okay? It’s not about Batman!”

“It is important, and you’re right, it’s so you don’t have to worry about a vocal minority fouling up people’s lives, but—it can be about that and still be about Batman.”

“He’s a douche,” Hal mumbled.

“He is,” Carol agreed. “It’s okay to want a relationship with a douche. Remember Jordan?”

“Jordan cheated on you with three women and then accidentally took you to a bar where one of them was working.”

“Yeah, that’s my point. It’s okay to want a relationship with a douche.”

Hal grimaced.

“Okay,” Carol said, and then she was scratching through text and making notes in the margins while Hal stared at his hands.

He took it silently from her and headed back to his office to implement her changes.

Once he’d formatted it to his satisfaction, he hesitated, then said screw it and emailed it to the Flash and Batman, with an impersonal note in the body about being certain the two of them would be the most willing to sign.

Batman reply-alled within a few moments: _I’m working on a formal structure. Any assistance you can render would be appreciated._

Barry replied somewhat more slowly with _cool. Where do I sign?_

Hal sat back in his chair and groaned.


	12. I Realized...

It took countless meetings, and Carol probably learned way more about the inner workings of the newly-coined “Justice League” than she probably should have without signing an NDA. (As soon as he’d had the thought, he’d stolen wholesale from several sources and created a basic one for members to sign and a slightly different, more punitive one for adjuncts to sign.)

“How is this happening to me?” Hal asked. “You know, they didn’t even consider me when we were voting for leadership today? I wrote all this shit up—“

“You relied overwhelmingly on the fact that public policy documents are all in the public domain,” Carol pointed out.

“I helped build this damned thing, and not a single person nominated me. It was all Superman and Batman, and I’m allowed to be a little resentful!”

“You are barely on-planet and you get called away in the middle of meetings and stuff all the time,” Carol pointed out. “I can’t justify keeping you on the payroll, and now that you have insurance, I don’t have to.”

“Huh, true,” Hal said. “Should I find a part time job?”

“Don’t be an idiot. You’re a 1099 contractor, you go up when you can, and you live in my spare room and eat my food.”

Hal blinked. “I don’t remember signing anything to this effect.”

Carol smiled a small, secret smile, and a call came in that he had to answer.

Months later, he stood in the smoking remains of Mount Justice and turned to Batman. “Well, now I know why no one wanted me for leader. What’s next?”

“I had a plan. We’re public now, though, and that will need to be dealt with first.”

“Yeah,” Hal said. “Anything I can do to help?”

“Stay on-planet?” Batman gritted out, and the frustration that colored his tone set Hal aback.

“Look, my job is bigger than this tiny backwater, okay!” he burst out. “I have a lot of responsibilities, and you guys? You’re here to look after this specific planet. You’re here to make sure shit like this doesn’t happen, so I don’t have to worry about Oa calling me and saying, ‘Oh, by the way, there’s been a major event in your sector, please immediately report to these coordinates,’ and it turns out they meant _Earth_ and I have to freak out for the entirety of the—“

“Hal,” Batman said, and then he tilted and fell to his knees.

“Jesus!” Hal snapped, and then he was using the ring and pheromone-clouded memory to start stripping off Batman’s armor, finding blood but no injury until he got the top of the chest removed and… there.

A nasty, jagged laceration crossed from Batman’s throat down across his pectoral, bleeding profusely at its deepest point and more sluggishly where it was shallow.

“Shit,” Hal said, and immediately a construct was pressing up against it, pressure to slow the bleeding. Batman gurgled as he tried to arch away from the pressure, but Hal’s will was indomitable.

“I need some assistance in here!” Hal shouted, and he grabbed Batman’s hand while spinning up a construct in the form of a floating stretcher. Batman was flopping around too much to safely lift it, so he just squeezed Batman’s hand and said “It’s okay, we’re going to get you help,” over and over.

Weirdly, Robin was at their side straight away. He hadn’t realized the kid was even at Mount Justice, and he was horrified that the kid had to see his… mentor? Dad? Like that, so he tried to shoo the kid off, but the kid was persistent and only grabbed hold of Batman’s free hand and glared furiously at Hal.

“I may be a kid, but I’ve seen way worse. And the others will just find out who he is, and then he’ll be _pissed_ , and you know it.”

Hal nodded. “I may have to—“

“Restrain him,” Robin ordered. “He’s basically the world’s worst patient. We’ve got to get him to the Cave before any of the others see him, though.”

“He needs a trauma surgeon.”

“Alfred’s already on it. We know a lady, it’s _fine_.”

Hal took that as truth, because he had to do _something_ , and he cocooned them in a construct just as more League members entered the room.

“I don’t know where I’m going!” Hal said moments later, when they were on the approach to Gotham.

“Wayne Manor!” Robin replied, and Hal laughed, giddy with adrenaline and high on terror for Batman’s life.

In the Batcave for the second time, he finally met Alfred, and Hal was struck with a desire to thank him for packing that lotion for Bruce, that third time they’d hooked up, and wasn’t that just the stupidest thing?

Alfred ordered everyone around with an enviable pragmatism, and once Bruce was stretched out, naked, on the bed Hal had once woken up on, Hal could sit down.

“If you would please, sir, maintain that admirable bandage until I have more… skilled assistance.”

Robin didn’t take offense at that insinuation, he just frowned in Bruce’s general direction and then rested a hand on Hal’s shoulder.

“I dunno if will’s communicable,” he said. “But here, have some of mine, if you can.”

Hal dredged up a canned answer he used on worlds that had actually heard of the Lantern Corps; “If there’s a ring in this sector, it will almost definitely seek you out.”

Robin, though, wasn’t those kids, and he somehow understood the implications. “You don’t get to die until you’re old and ugly,” he said fiercely. “You _or_ B, okay?”

“Right,” Hal said.

A lovely woman entered the medical alcove then, and she gestured imperiously. “I have no idea what the hell this green stuff is, but I need it gone. Jeez, has it even been tested? It could be crawling with infection!”

“It’s… not anything,” Hal said, letting the construct fade.

“It’s a psychic construction manifested out of the Green Lantern’s willpower,” Robin offered.

“It was in my way,” the doctor said. “Now it’s not. Hush; this is serious, I need to concentrate.”

The ring had sent out a distress call, which Hal would argue to his dying day was not a conscious effort on his part, so that several members of the Lantern corps made their way into the Cave.

“You’d think B would have arranged for that to be impossible,” Hal said to Robin as his fellow Corpsman assembled themselves.

“He has overrides for Lantern energy, but obviously that criteria is a little broad,” Robin agreed.

“Your mate is injured.”

“Thanks for that update, Kilowog,” Hal snarled.

 _Mate?_ Robin mouthed, raising his eyebrows comically. Hal shrugged.

“We will make the arrangement.”

Hal wanted to protest or something, but he didn’t, he couldn’t. Batman had _asked_ him to stay Earthside, so… so maybe he would. Just while Batman was recovering. The Green Lantern Corps was made up of far more than just him.

He could take a few weeks off. 

Alfred bustled him upstairs and into a guest suite which was better than some of the five star European hotels he’s stayed in, and Hal couldn’t help but gawk around like a damned tourist, poking at the furniture and admiring the tasteful art before finally venturing into the bathroom for a much needed shower.

The bathroom was otherworldly. His shower took forty-five minutes just because of how amazing the water pressure was and the fact that the water _never_ went cold. When he emerged finally, there was a stack of clothing that was, oddly enough, in his size, not Batman’s.

Not that he was really the sort of guy who had been looking forward to wearing Batman’s clothes, but it was mystifying how they’d _happened_ to have clothing in his size.

Creepy.

He put on pajamas for basically the first time since he’d gotten out of the service, and stared at the obscenely large, perfectly made up bed, torn with indecision. He _should_ sleep; he was exhausted and he needed to be fighting fi—

Or, really, no he didn’t. He had the next few weeks off.

He was saved from actually _thinking_ about that by a soft knock at his door. “Come in,” he said, turning so he could see what Alfred wanted—

Except it was Robin at the door, smiling tentatively and also wearing his pajamas. “Alfred always makes cocoa after a bad mission,” he said. Hal smiled back.

“That sounds… better than trying to sleep.”

“Oh, believe me it is,” Robin said, and Hal realized abruptly that he couldn’t just call him Robin, not while they were in civilian clothes and haunting Bruce Wayne’s mansion, so he wracked his brain for the kid’s name: surely, at some point, he’d read it, or Wayne had said it? Except he’d broken up with Wayne before he’d met the kid, so…

“I have no idea what to call you,” Hal admitted.

“Dick,” the kid replied. “I go by Dick. And I’ve already been calling you Hal, but if you want to keep stuff separate I can call you Mr. Jordan?”

“Oh, God, no. Please never do that. Ever.”

Dick laughed and offered Hal his hand. “C’mon, Hal, let’s go get our cocoa. We’ve earned it. And you can tell me all about why your Corps buddies think B’s your mate.”

Hal groaned, but he really liked the kid, so he took the offered hand. “How about we worry about that, oh, say, never?”

Dick’s eyes went narrow and perceptive, and Hal wondered, not for the first time, exactly how old the kid actually was. “Does this have anything to do with the reason why B thinks you hate him now?”

Hal gaped at the kid. “No! What? No, of course—I don’t hate—“

But he kind of did, didn’t he? He, for the first time since finding out that Batman was Bruce Wayne, tried to follow the train of his emotions on the matter, and he really couldn’t sort them out. He’d invested too much in both relationships (whether he’d like to admit it or not was a different matter) to extricate a single, coherent feeling about the conclusion of both.

And then, there had been the part where he’d written a love letter to Batman in the form of a policy brief.

That might have happened.

“Maybe,” Hal said, finally. “I’m pretty sure it’s not a conversation I’m supposed to have with an eleven year-old though.”

“Good guess,” was the only response he got before Dick had disappeared down the hall without him. Hal wandered around some and eventually discovered the kitchen where Dick was hiding, (he thought maybe there were other kitchens somewhere. The mansion was pretty overwhelming.)

There was a second mug waiting for me, and a carafe of what he assumed was more cocoa and a bowl of whipped cream.

“I made the whipped cream,” Dick informed him proudly. “Alfred said he’ll bequeath his secret recipe for the cocoa to me in his will, so I didn’t make that, because obviously I don’t know how.”

There was a sense of “and I never will” to Dick’s statement that made Hal smile, and Dick smiled back, which eased some of the stress that had cropped up earlier.

“So, here’s the thing,” Hal said. “My buddies all have thought me and B were a thing since that time he got kidnapped and the crime stopped? And there’s not a good way to dissuade them, because they just… think its false modesty?”

Dick snorted, and Hal laughed a little. “Yep. But anyway, when I had to take B to testify, there was some… stuff. It led to me finding out that he was Bruce Wayne and I—it hurt my feelings. A lot.”

Dick nodded sagely. “It’s because you thought maybe Bruce trusted you, and you thought for sure Batman did, and then you found out his secret and you thought neither of them did so it was like getting betrayed by two people instead of just one which must have sucked?”

Hal set down his cocoa before he could choke on it. “Yeah, basically.”

“Do you hate him then? Really hate him and not… I dunno. I thought maybe he was wrong because you looked so scared when I came in, almost as scared as I felt when I saw him like that, so…”

“I hate him a little bit,” Hal said. “But I think it’s because I still like him and respect him. If I didn’t have _those_ feelings, I wouldn’t be able to hate him.”

Dick nodded again. “I hate him a lot of times. But I know he really cares about me, so I have to decide, sometimes, if it’s more important to worry about how much he can hurt me or how much he can make me not hurt? And… I bet it’s different for you, but he’s. He protects me. Everything he’s ever done, every secret he’s ever kept that’s blown up in his face has been about protecting me. And I’m lucky to have that. So I don’t hate him.”

“Maybe,” Hal said. “Maybe you’re right. And he’s far luckier to have you than vice versa—you make amazing whipped cream.”

Dick’s grin turned shy and sober, and Hal had to reach over and squeeze his shoulder.

“What do we do after cocoa?” Hal asked, changing the subject.

“Sleepovers, usually. But you don’t have to—“

“I love sleepovers,” Hal replied. “Blanket forts and board games and movies, right?”

Dick nodded fiercely. “Right!”

It was three hours later that Alfred found them, and Dick didn’t even notice the other man’s entrance, just continued chattering away about why Metropolis was _absolutely_ the best movie ever, but of course Hal probably didn’t like science fiction considering he was around aliens and advanced tech _all the time_ , but that didn’t matter because Metropolis was in a class of its own…

Alfred inclined his head slightly, and Hal extracted himself with a hair ruffle and a murmured offer to go grab more snacks. Dick waved him off and remained glued to his movie.

“If the League could see this,” Hal said once there was a door between them and the kid, “They would shut up about him being Batman’s protégé once and for all.”

“I rather doubt that would be the case,” Alfred said. Hal ran his hand through his hair with frustration.

“No, you’re right, they’d just start going on that he’s probably doing it because he subconsciously fear that he’d lose all these privileges if he stopped—“ Hal gestured furiously instead of finishing the thought. “But seriously, does that kid ever voice a passing fancy that Wayne doesn’t immediately provide for him?”

“I believe Master Bruce has drawn the line on several occasions,” Alfred said, then, after a pause, he added, “To elephants, which even he realizes are hardly practical for a child to have.”

Hal had to muffle his laughter in his sleeve. “So what’s the news on B?” he asked.

Alfred frowned. “Dr. Thompkins has referred to him twice as a stubborn old goat and assured me that he will make a full recovery.”

Hal nodded. “But he’ll be out of commission for a few weeks, won’t he?”

“You surmise correctly, sir,” Alfred said dryly. “Would you like the privilege of telling him so yourself?”

“Hah!” Hal said. “Despite whatever evidence you may have to the contrary, I’m not actually a masochist.”

Alfred’s expression twisted into one of dismay and concern before it smoothed again to something bland and polite. “Of course I would insinuate no such thing, Master Jordan.”

“Hal, please,” he replied, wincing. “And I’m sorry, I’m tired and running off at the mouth, per usual. Ignore me. All my friends do.”

“I was, actually planning to leave Superman as the bearer of this particular piece of news,” Alfred said. “You are welcome to remain safely cocooned in your blanket fort with young Master Dick.”

“Wait, Supes knows… this stuff?”

“I believe Master Bruce phrased it thus: ‘Goddamned x-ray vision’. I could be misquoting, however.”

“Oh,” Hal said, feeling unaccountably relieved that B hadn’t told other people about his identity. “Right, okay then.”

“I have heard it said you have a few weeks off,” Alfred said, which reassured him that everyone in this manor was completely nosy. “You are welcome to spend as much time here as you’d like.”

“Oh, thanks,” Hal said. “Maybe just until B’s back on his feet? I’ll keep the kid company.”

“Very good, sir,” Alfred said.

“I could use the break,” Hal said.

“Of course, sir.”

“I’m gonna—“ He jerked his thumb over his shoulder to indicate Dick’s room, and Alfred just smiled knowingly.

Hal’s decision to take a break lasted approximately 18 hours, and then an urgent call came in from Commissioner Gordon and he got the singular pleasure of watching Robin suit up to go fight crime on his own.

“Okay, I’m not your parent or anything, but this is insane, Rob, you’ve gotta realize that.”

“Well, I can’t just sit here while Poison Ivy takes over the city!” Robin argued. “I’ve got to help; the police are overwhelmed.”

Hal blinked at him and wisely did not ask what the hell an eleven year old kid could do that the cops could not. Instead he ran his thumb over the back of his ring and thought about how he was supposed to be taking a break.

“Yeah, okay, where are we going, and who’s driving?”


	13. The Blame is on Me

Blanket forts and cocoa turned into this regular thing, and Hal had run out the second morning for some adhesive-backed velcro because the truth of the matter was that he had no idea what building a blanket fort was actually supposed to entail. He’d googled it, but the internet hadn’t really provided any insight that was applicable, since instead of chairs or boxes as support, Dick had strung industrial strength strapping from existing anchors on the walls. Even so, the whole thing seems precarious and susceptible to collapse in slight breezes or if a six-foot tall man accidentally breathed wrong while inside.

Dick was resourceful and immediately grabbed the packages of Velcro from him before racing around to apply it at the most logical places, and Hal sat down heavily inside the fort. It was his turn to pick a movie, and for some reason all he really wanted to watch was the Keira Knightley version of Pride and Prejudice, which made him sigh and lay back.

“Who are you missing? They can come over too, if you want.”

Hal didn’t bother trying to make eye contact with the kid: he was a hugger. Instead he curled his arm around Dick’s chest and gathered him close.

“Carol. She’s fantastic. Honestly, the ring should have picked her. Not that I’m not glad it didn’t, but seriously, she could stare down God himself and he’d flinch first.”

“Has she met B?”

“Couple times, he invested in her company and still uses it for contracting.”

Dick sighed and resettled. “So, basically, no, she hasn’t.”

“No, guess not.”

Dick sighed again, and then squirmed free. Hal propped himself up on his elbow just to watch the kid run around like a stung kitten, because it was always worth watching. He was pretty sure that he’d never be able to commit to kids of his own—his life was too chaotic, and he was on Earth all too rarely, to do that to other living beings, but. But he could pretend with Dick while they built blanket forts. And he could maybe convince B that Robin would be well-served if he came on some of the more diplomatic missions Hal had.

Of course, B was viciously and somewhat charmingly (if you asked anyone who didn’t mind his having a protégé) overprotective of Robin so the odds of that happening were slim at best.

Still—

“Here, I’m having a parent night and it’s so ridiculous because B _never_ makes it, but. Well, I dunno. It’s not like anyone would be surprised if it was you.”

“You know,” Hal said, taking the pamphlet from Dick. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the fact that the paparazzi have made it so that you know so many details of my relationship with your dad.”

“Sex sells,” Dick said sagely, with such a grave expression on his face that Hal choked on laughter, and the only reason the fort didn’t fall down was because Dick had secured it so well with Hal’s Velcro.

Hal asked Alfred before he committed, but all Alfred had to say on the matter was that he was “Quite certain that young Master Dick would truly appreciate his attendance,” which wasn’t helpful. He did offer Hal the press release they’d prepared about Bruce’s ‘skiing accident’ so that he wouldn’t completely step in it if asked (when asked) and while on the one hand, it felt dishonest to be going to Dick’s school when he’d broken up with both Wayne and Batman on separate (the same?) occasions, B _was_ out of commission (and lightly sedated, according to Alfred even though Hal had almost certainly _not_ asked.) and Dick had asked. Sort of.

So Hal put on a suit that had mysteriously appeared in his bedroom that morning and he let Alfred chauffeur them and he let Dick seize his hand and drag him through an utterly _ridiculous_ private academy to an even more opulent auditorium.

 _Everyone_ knew who he was. Or, at least, they presumed to—Hal Jordan, reckless test pilot, former military, ‘Brucie’s’ kept man. It was overwhelming and odd, because they all had this image of him that just—it wasn’t _true_. It both sucked ass and was ridiculously fun, because he was playacting, he got to flirt with everyone because that’s what flyboys do, and because everyone was all about telling him what a great kid Dick was, which was sort of gratifying.

It made him think about a lot of what-might-have-beens, that was for sure. There were at least two alternate universes out there where he’d ended up pretty serious with Dick’s adoptive dad, and that would mean he’d get to do this sort of thing for real.

Homework and blanket forts wouldn’t be a vacation, they’d be real life.

“Mr. Jordan,” a woman said, pretty and pouting with really impressive cleavage, and Hal turned on the charm for her because who wouldn’t when faced with a fawning socialite?

“Hal, please. My last name is for my COs, really.”

“Hal then,” the woman said. “But only if you call me Janine?”

Hal swept her hand up in a move he’d totally cribbed off of Bruce Wayne and pressed a butterfly-light kiss to her knuckles.

“It’d be my pleasure,” he told her sincerely.

She giggled, and he kept her hand cupped warmly in his. “Is there champagne at this thing? I don’t think there should be, but this whole event here is... Unexpected."

And that’s how it could have ended; how it _should have ended_ , really.

Sex against the wall at a catered event; him in a rented— _borrowed_ —tux, and her boneless and gasping afterwards, him holding her and stroking her skin while she gasped her way back to some semblance of presentability because he might be an asshole but he wasn’t—

He wasn’t an _asshole_.

Dick Grayson was somewhere in this room, and he _was_ playing a part, but the only reason he had this part to play was because of Bruce Wayne, and…

“Hey kiddo,” he said when Dick careened into his leg, scooping him up like he wasn’t actually eleven yet and grinning at how easy it was, because Richard Grayson spent his life being scooped off the ground and tossed around.

He was struck again by the desire to work with Robin; the things he could _show_ the kid.

“Hal,” Dick said seriously. “I’m too big for this.”

Hal shifted his grip, pretending to consider that, not even realizing that the woman had walked away. “But it’s so fun,” he said in his best Batman growl, and Dick scrunched up his nose and Hal couldn’t suppress his laughter.

When they left, Hal’s suit was in disarray and Dick was half-asleep and clinging to his side, and Hal’s ears were ringing with the teachers’ compliments about how clever Dick was, how energetic, how he had a smile for everyone, and it had turned out that Janine was Dick’s math teacher and he’d thought, “I’m glad I didn’t go there.”

Alfred brought the car up, and he smiled at the two of them.

“I see you have overexerted yourselves this evening,” he told them.

“Mission success, Alfie,” Dick said blurrily. “Debrief later.”

“Indeed,” Alfred said fondly. 

Hal fumbled at getting Dick bundled into the back of the car, but Alfred didn’t move to interfere, and he wondered if that meant they trusted him.

***

“Care,” he whispered into his phone, curled up as small as possible in the extravagant bed he had in Wayne Manor. “Carol, I have a huge problem.”

“What is it?” she asked, soft and warm and 4 damned hours behind on the West Coast. 

“I think I’m in love with… everything.”

“Hal, you moron,” she said, and she meant i-love-you and i-wish-i-could-fix-the-hurt. “What took you so long?”

“I didn’t know he was Batman,” he told her.

“You were in love with him first.”

Hal sighed and rubbed his forehead. “I kind of was, yeah. How’d you—how come you knew?”

“You didn’t break up with him because of his floozies or because he was too rich for you or anything… normal. You broke up with him because you were sick of lying to him. Baby, that’s… _that’s_ love.”

“What the hell is wrong with me?”

Carol snorted and told him about her day instead of replying. It was kinder, really.


	14. I Knew You Were...

Three days later, he was eating oatmeal in the kitchen when Dick looked up at the doorway and then fled through the door to the gardens (honest-to-God gardens, with flowers and turnips sharing space, and a section that was entirely roses. He loved the roses).

“Hi B,” he said into his bowl.

“Hal,” Bruce grunted. Hal stole a glance; he was obviously in a lot of pain, and Hal bit his tongue against an injunction to go the hell back to bed. Bruce wasn’t his to order around, and it would probably be about as well received as… well. Trying to order Bruce around.

“You made headlines,” Bruce said, sliding a tablet over to Hal. He could see a picture of himself, Dick clinging to his hand and both of them grinning like an idiots, and he slid it back.

“Yeah, that seems to happen around you.”

Bruce winced. “It… is possible that I have not been entirely fair to you.”

“You think?” Hal said, feigning surprise. He made sure his eyes were huge for effect, and he took a too-large spoonful of oatmeal so he wouldn’t have to worry about a more useful response.

Bruce sighed, which led to him shifting and pressing a hand to his injury. “You should be in bed,” Hal told him. “Whatever olive branch you think you owe me can wait. You’re obviously not 100% yet.” He was barely 20%, but apparently Bruce was as stubborn as he was rich, which was saying something.

Hal didn’t even have that excuse. He sighed. “Apology accepted.”

“What.” Bruce said.

Hal set his spoon down and shoved his chair back. “This is obviously painful for you; so apology accepted, I don’t hate you, blah blah let’s get you back to bed before Alfred finds you and kills us both.”

“I’m fine,” Bruce said.

“Really,” Hal replied curtly. “Prove it; stand up so I can escort you back to where you belong.”

Bruce slumped forward until his forehead was pressed to the table. Hal moved to his good side and laid a hesitant hand on his shoulder.

“I didn’t have sex with Dick’s math teacher,” he told him, rubbing at the muscles there. Just as impressive as always, he thought, a little giddily.

“Janine?” Bruce asked, sounding confused. “Why not?”

“I just didn’t.”

“But I’ve had sex with her,” Bruce said. He sounded defensive.

“I’m shocked,” Hal replied dryly.

“She’s not a bad choice, given the crowd you were with that evening.” Bruce’s breathing was evening out, so the distraction was working.

“You’re saying I could do worse, aren’t you?”

“No?”

“I could. I have.” Hal crouched so he was level with Bruce and brought his good arm over his shoulder. “Ready?”

“Yes. But it would have been a nice distract—” Bruce hissed in a breath as Hal lifted him. He weighed approximately as much as a large boulder, and Hal found himself wrapped in his uniform. He didn’t do anything so idiotic as construct a stretcher or fly them, but the extra support was nice.

“Could have been more,” Hal said. “She seemed up for a whole affair; secret mistress type stuff. Too bad she didn’t know I wasn’t your booty call anymore.”

Bruce grunted. “Couldn’t have, you don’t like women.”

“I like women!” Hal snapped, offended. “I’ve slept with plenty of women. Just because I’ve put out for a billionaire’s smile and a shrug doesn’t make me gay. I’ve even had sex with alien women! I’m not—”

“Exactly. You’re pansexual, yes, but you only _date_ men.”

“You and Carol, I swear to god,” Hal muttered. They’d almost made it to the stairs. He wasn’t exactly sure how they were going to make it _up_ the stairs, but that was a problem for a few minutes from now.

“Oh, good,” Bruce said. “I’m right then.”

“Because that’s the important thing here. Right. No. I’m only saying—”

“I wouldn’t have cared.” A pause, then—“I wouldn’t have _minded._ ”

“No, I believe you.” Hal sighed and he created a large, plush couch at the foot of the stairs and shouldered Bruce into it. “We’re not walking up the stairs.”

“The entire concept of the Green Lantern Corps fascinates me,” Bruce said. “But the power to construct things simply by willing them—”

“Both useful and really annoying. I can’t—like if I’m dying of thirst, I can’t will water into existence.”

“But a water purifier? A dehumidifier?”

“I’d have to know how to build one, and I’m no engineer.”

Bruce shook his head. “You could be; I’ve seen your math.”

Hal hesitated, then replied quietly, “They don’t teach flyboys how to build planes, and I was always only ever a flyboy, B. You should—that’s something I figured you already knew about me.”

“Dammit, Hal,” Bruce said, and then he used the arm he still had slung over his shoulder to drag Hal in and kiss him. It was slow and familiar and too-gentle, and Hal pulled away before it could get serious.

“You know, I didn’t adopt Dick until after I met you,” Bruce said. “I wasn’t exactly—”

“That isn’t the point I was making, Bruce,” Hal said. “I was… I can’t let this stupid fling go. And I’m sorry for making it more than—”

“Dammit, Hal,” Bruce growled, grabbing his hand and pulling him in close, not for a kiss this time, just for holding, and Hal exhaled slowly, relaxing, after a moment, into the embrace. “Brucie Wayne is an asshole. But I never, ever meant for you to feel like you weren’t worth his—my regard. And I behaved abominably.”

“I—”

“You’re as much ‘only’ a flyboy as I am ‘only’ a billionaire,” Bruce said.

“Oh,” Hal said. “So. It’s not just me?”

“It was never just you, you stubborn _asshole_.”

Hal laughed a little, and the plush couch shifted to his usual bubble and carried them up the stairs. It _was_ meant to be a projection of his will, after all.

“Takes one to know one,” he replied, kissing Bruce. He didn’t let it get too heavy, because he was not going to be the guy who _pushed_ when his partner was injured, but…

Well. It would be the fourteenth time, or the fifteenth, or maybe only the second; and it wouldn’t matter.

He was ready to stop keeping count.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, it's over. I'm going to miss posting this every day. I do plan to revisit this with codas though, so if you want to leave a prompt on my [tumblr](http://theliterator.tumblr.com), my ask box is always open and anon is always on.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and commenting these last two weeks! I love you guys!


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